What a flapping and battering of carpets on the much-enduring stump!  What furious activity of Martha!  What eager help of little Charlotte, who was in a perfect trepidation of delight at the rumour that a real beauty, fit for a heroine, was coming!  What trotting hither and thither of Miss Mercy!  What netting of blinds and stitching of chintz by Miss Salome!  What envy and contempt on the part of other landladies on hearing that Miss Faithfull’s apartments were engaged for the whole winter!  What an anxious progress was Miss Mercy’s, when she conducted Mrs. Frost and Mary to a final inspection! and what was her triumph when Mary, sitting down on the well-stuffed arm-chair, pronounced that people who would not come there did not understand what comfort was.

Every living creature gazed—­Mrs. Frost through her blind, Mary behind her hydrangea in the balcony, Charlotte from her attic window,—­when the lodgers disembarked in full force—­two ladies, two children, one governess, three maids, two men, two horses, one King Charles’s spaniel!  Let it be what it might, it was a grand windfall for the Miss Faithfulls.

Mary’s heart throbbed as the first carriage thundered upon the gravel, and a sudden swelling checked her voice as she was about to exclaim ‘There she is!’ when the second lady emerged, and moved up the garden path.  She was veiled and mantled; but accustomed as was Mary’s eye to the Spanish figure and walk, the wonderful grace of movement and deportment struck her as the very thing her eye had missed ever since she left Peru.  What the rest of the strangers were like, she knew not; she had only eyes for the creature who had won Louis’s affection, and doubtless deserved it, as all else that was precious.

‘So they are come, Charlotte,’ said Mrs. Frost, as the maiden demurely brought in the kettle.

‘Yes, ma’am;’ and stooping to put the kettle on, and growing carnation-coloured over the fire.  ’Oh, ma’am, I never saw such a young lady.  She is all one as the king’s sister in The Lord of the Isles!’

While the object of all this enthusiasm was arriving at the Terrace, she was chiefly conscious that Sir Roland was sinking down on the ramparts of Acre, desperately wounded in the last terrible siege; and she was considering whether palmer or minstrel should carry the tidings of his death to Adeline.  It was her refuge from the unpleasant feelings, with which she viewed the experiment of the Northwold baths upon Louisa’s health.  As the carriage stopped, she cast one glance at the row of houses, they struck her as dreary and dilapidated; she drew her mantle closer, shivered, and walked into the house.  ‘Small rooms, dingy furniture-that is mamma’s affair,’ passed through her mind, as she made a courteous acknowledgment of Miss Mercy’s greeting, and stood by the drawing-room fire.  ’Roland slowly awoke from his swoon; a white-robed old man, with a red eight-pointed cross on his breast, was bending over him.  He knew himself to be in—­I can’t remember which tower the Hospitallers defended.  I wonder whether Marianne can find the volume of Vertot.’