evoked a little dry protest of incredulity from his sister.
On the third day only—for they travelled very slowly, on Hatty's account—they reached Mentone. Their rooms were secured at one of the less fashionable hotels, standing high in the town, surrounded by a little orange garden, and commanding the bay, with its jutting promontory of discoloured houses, its campanile, its brown fishing-boats and purple sea, melting, as they first saw it, into a golden sky.
They found here all they looked for—more, perhaps, than they had a right to expect. For the small hotel was almost empty; and the inevitable clergyman and his wife (with a white "Dolly Varden" cap), the amiable spinster who purred over her knitting, and one melancholy man who defied classification, for he seemed to belong to nothing and to nowhere, were the only persons they ever saw at the table d'hôte. Elizabeth's fears were allayed. There was no rabble of noisy tourists, with the risk, attaching thereto, of recognition from some north-country acquaintance. A sleepy routine pervaded everything, and our trio slid into it contentedly. They hired two rooms hard by; one where Alaric could work, the other, nominally, for the two girls. But, for the present, at least, it was impossible Hatty should paint. She could not stand for very long; she could not walk at all. She lay for hours, in a long cane chair, in the sunshine, among the orange trees and violets, with a book, where the good parson and his wife—a black mushroom hat replacing her "Dolly Varden"—always found her, on their outward walk, and stopped to say
