Though proud enough with his own sex, even to hauteur at times, his love for Ida made him her very slave; and now how often came back to Vane's memory, with regret and reproach, the bygone scoffs and silly ironies he had often cast on his friends, who, when he was heart-whole, were suffering from the lost smile of those they had loved, perhaps more truly than wisely. Recollections of his own laughter, his gibes and his quips, came back to him as if in mockery now. Trevor Chute and Clare were separated again; but not as before: now he did not feel, as in the old time, that he had lost her, and he looked back to his last interview with joy. Long though the time seemed since then, it was but recently that her dark eyes had smiled lovingly into his; that all the nameless charms of her presence had been with him, that she had spoken with him, and that he had listened to her. When would all this come to pass again? Till then what mattered it how he killed the time, or whither he went? Yet pleasure and amusement palled on him; the sea breeze had lost its charm, and the sparkling waves their beauty; flowers seemed to be without fragrance; the fertile green pastures of Germany and Denmark, in all their summer glory, and the woods with the first tints of autumn, were without interest to his eye; for he was, more than ever, a man of one thought, and that thought was Clare Collingwood. In this mood of mind, without thinking how or why, he started for the famous old Hans town. The train took him to Korsor, in Zealand; there he crossed the Great Belt, and from the deck of the _Maid of Norway_ steamer could see the Danish Isles steeped in the noon-day heat, when every sandy holm and green headland seemed to vibrate in the sunshine that glistened on the blue waves which roll round Nyeborg and picturesque old Odensee; and after running through Sleswig and Holstein on a pleasant afternoon in autumn, he found himself at Hamburg, in the train for Lubeck, 'the Carthage of the North.' Tom Travers had seen to the luggage and the inspection thereof; procured the tickets for himself and his master, and the latter had just lit his cigar, and composed himself for his journey, pleased to find himself the sole occupant of a carriage, when he suddenly observed a lady, undoubtedly an Englishwoman, procuring a bouquet of rose-buds from a Vierlander _fleuriste_, one of those picturesquely costumed girls who wear a bodice that is a mass of spangles and embroidery, a straw hat shaped like a Spanish sombrero, and thick, bunchy skirts, such as we may see in an old picture of Teniers, and who come from that district which lies between the Elbe and the Bille, where the whole population are market-gardeners. There was some delay, during which the train was shifted a little, and amid the bustle of the platform the lady looked about in confusion, uncertain which was her carriage.