moment and had his head on her lap, calling to papa to keep the carriage fast and block the way of the squadron, for the man’s leg was hurt.  I really thought we were lost.  At these manoeuvres anything may happen, at any instant.  Papa will follow the horse-artillery.  You know his vanity to be a military quite as much as a naval commander like the Greeks and Romans, he says.  We took the bruised man into our carriage and drove him to camp, Carinthia nursing him on the way.’

’Carinthia!  She’s well fitted with her name.  What with her name and her hair and her build and her singular style of attire, one wonders at her coming into civilized parts.  She ‘s utterly unlike Chillon.’

Henrietta reddened at the mention of one of her own thoughts in the contrasting of the pair.

They had their points of likeness, she said.

It did not concern Livia to hear what these were.  Back to Baden, with means to procure the pleasant shocks of the galvanic battery there, was her thought; for she had a fear of the earl’s having again departed in a huff at Henrietta’s behaviour.

The admiral consented that his daughter should go, as soon as he heard that Miss Kirby was to stay.  He had when a young man met her famous father; he vowed she was the Old Buccaneer young again in petticoats and had made prize of an English man-of-war by storm; all the profit, however, being his.  This he proved with a courteous clasp of the girl and a show of the salute on her cheek, which he presumed to take at the night’s farewell.  ‘She’s my tonic,’ he proclaimed heartily.  She seemed to Livia somewhat unstrung and toneless.  The separation from her brother in the morning might account for it.  And a man of the admiral’s age could be excused if he exalted the girl.  Senility, like infancy, is fond of plain outlines for the laying on of its paints.  The girl had rugged brows, a short nose, red hair; no young man would look at her twice.  She was utterly unlike Chillon!  Kissing her hand to Henrietta from the steps of the hotel, the girl’s face improved.

Livia’s little squire, Sir Meeson Corby, ejaculated as they were driving down the main street, ’Fleetwood’s tramp!  There he goes.  Now see, Miss Fakenham, the kind of object Lord Fleetwood picks up and calls friend!—­calls that object friend! . .  But, what?  He has been to a tailor and a barber!’

‘Stop the coachman.  Run, tell Mr. Woodseer I wish him to join us,’ Livia said, and Sir Meeson had to thank his tramp for a second indignity.  He protested, he simulated remonstrance,—­he had to go, really feeling a sickness.

The singular-looking person, whose necessities or sense of the decencies had, unknown to himself and to the others, put them all in motion that day, swung round listening to the challenge to arms, as the puffy little man’s delivery of the countess’s message sounded.  He was respectably clad, he thought, in the relief of his escape from the suit of clothes discarded, and he silently followed Sir Meeson’s trot to the carriage.  ‘Should have mistaken you for a German to-day, sir,’ the latter said, and trotted on.