spoke a word or two in English, as we tried to accommodate the inanimate form between us, she looked up and said:  ’Ah!  I should not have let you come, Madame!  I do everything wrong.  I pray you to leave me!’ Then, as I of course refused, she added:  ‘Ah, you know not—–­’ and then whispered in my ear, though the poor senseless girl would scarce have caught the sound, the dreadful word ‘smallpox.’  I could answer at once that I had had it—­long, long ago, in my childish days, when my grandmother nursed me and both my brothers through it, and she breathed freely, I asked her why she apprehended it, and she told me that some weeks ago her husband had taken the whole party down to his pleasure-house in the country, to superintend some arrangement in his garden, which he wished to make before the frost set in.

He and his daughter Veronica had been ailing for some days, but it was only on that very morning that tidings had come to the Hague that the smallpox had, on the very day of their visit, declared itself in the family of the gardener who kept the house, and that two of his children were since dead.  Poor Millicent had always had a feeble will, which yielded against her judgment and wishes.  She had not had the malady herself, ‘But oh! my child,’ she said, ‘my little Emilia!’ And when I found that the child had not been on the expedition to Hunderslust, and had not seen her father or sister since they had been sickening, I ventured to promise that I would take her home, and the young mother clasped my hand in fervent gratitude.

But we were not prepared for the scene that met us when we drove into the porte cochere.  The place seemed deserted, not a servant was to be seen but one old wrinkled hag, who hobbled up to the door saying something in Dutch that made Madame van Hunker clasp her hands and exclaim:  ‘All fled!  Oh, what shall we do?’

At that moment, however, Dr. Dirkius appeared at the door.  He spoke French, and he explained that he had been sent for about an hour ago, and no sooner had he detected smallpox than Mynheer’s valet had fled from his master’s room and spread the panic throughout the household, so that every servant, except one scullion and this old woman, had deserted it.  The Dutch have more good qualities than the French, their opposites, are inclined to believe, but they have also a headstrong selfishness that seems almost beyond reach.  Nor perhaps had poor Mynheer van Hunker been a master who would win much affection.

I know not what we should have done if Dr. Dirkius had not helped me to carry Cornelia to her chamber.  The good man had also locked the little Emilia into her room, intending, after having taken the first measures for the care of his patients, to take or send her to the ladies at Lord Newcastle’s, warning them not to return.  Madame van Hunker looked deadly pale, but she was a true wife, and said nothing should induce her to forsake her husband and his daughters;