Both brother and sister, however, kept their impressions to themselves, and of all the subjects discussed between them not one word betrayed what each forecast about Josephine. I am half sorry it is no part of my task to follow them on the road, and yet I feel I could not impart to my reader the almost boylike enjoyment old Peter felt at every stage of the journey. He had made the grand tour of Europe more than half a century before, and he was in ecstasy to find so much that was unchanged around him. There were the long-eared caps, and the monstrous earrings, and the sabots, and the heavily tasselled team horses, and the chiming church-bells, and the old-world equipages, and the strangely undersized soldiers,--all just as he saw them last! And every one was so polite and ceremonious, and so idle and so unoccupied, and the theatres were so large and the newspapers so small, and the current coin so defaced, and the order of the meats at dinner so inscrutable, and every one seemed contented just because he had nothing to do. “Isn't it all I have told you, Dinah dear? Don't you perceive how accurate my picture has been? And is it not very charming and enjoyable?” “They are the greatest cheats I ever met in my life, brother Peter; and when I think that every grin that greets us is a matter of five francs, it mars considerably the pleasure I derive from the hilarity.” It was in this spirit they journeyed till they arrived at Brussels. CHAPTER XXIII. THE COLONEL'S COUNSELS When Conyers had learned from Colonel Hunter all that he knew of his father's involvement, it went no further than this, that the Lieutenant-General had either resigned or been deprived of his civil appointments, and Hunter was called upon to replace him. With all his habit of hasty and impetuous action, there was no injustice in Fred's nature, and he frankly recognized that, however painful to him personally, Hunter could not refuse to accede to what the Prince had distinctly pressed him to accept.