“It does more, Miss Herbert: it accomplishes the end of travel. Your doctor says, 'Go abroad,--take a holiday--turn your back on Downing Street, and bid farewell to cabinet councils.' Where is the benefit of such a course, I ask, if you are to pass the vacation cursing customhouse officers, bullying landlords, and browbeating waiters? I say always, 'Give me a bad dinner if you must, but do not derange my digestion; rather a damp bed than thorns in the pillow.'” “I am to say that you will see her, however,” said she, with that matter-of-fact adhesiveness to the question that never would permit her to join in my digressions. “Then I go under protest, Miss Herbert,--under protest, and, as the lawyers say, without prejudice,--that is, I go as a private gentleman, irresponsible and independent. Tell her this, and say, I know nothing of figures: arithmetic may suit the Board of Trade; in the Foreign Department we ignore it You may add, too, if you like, that from what you have seen of me, I am of a haughty disposition, easily offended, and very vindictive,--very!” “But I really don't think this,” said she, with a bewitching smile. “Not to _you_ de--” I was nearly in it again: “not to _you_,” said I, stammering and blushing till I felt on fire. I suspect that she saw all the peril of the moment, for she left the room hurriedly, on the pretext of asking Mrs. Keats to take more tea. “She is sensible of your devotion, Potts; but is she touched by it? Has she said to herself, 'That man is my fate, my destiny,--it is no use resisting him; dark and mysterious as he is, I am drawn towards him by an inscrutable sympathy'--or is she still struggling in the toils, muttering to her heart to be still, and to wait? Flutter away, gentle creature,” said I, compassionately, “but raffle not your lovely plumage too roughly; the bars of your cage are not the less impassable that they are invisible. You _shall_ love me, and you _shall_ be mine!” To these rapturous fancies there now succeeded the far less captivating thought of Mrs. Keats, and an approaching interview. Can any reader explain why it is, that one sits in quiet admiration of some old woman by Teniers or Holbein, and never experiences any chagrin or impatience at trials which, if only represented in life, would be positively odious? Why is it that art transcends nature, and that ugliness in canvas is more endurable than ugliness in the flesh? Now, for my own part, I'd rather have faced a whole gallery of the Dutch school, from Van Eyck to Verbagen, than have confronted that one old lady who sat awaiting me in No. 12. Twice as I sat at my breakfast did François put in his head, look at me, and retire without a word. “What is the matter? What do you mean?” cried I, impatiently, at the third intrusion. “It is madam that wishes to know when monsieur will be at leisure to go upstairs to her.”