Jackson, indeed, somewhat belied his rueful effort to look grieved. All appeared disappointed, save the tutor, ever fain to be serviceable, if seldom very successful where the office was of the present kind. Yet that day Mr Thorpe was excelling himself, now riding on, or now remaining behind, always for some object; nor was it long ere he came posting back, his plain, ineffectual features animated, and his mild short-sighted blue eyes shining moist through the thin-framed spectacles which enlarged them, to mention that they were close to Sèvres, where the royal porcelain was made. And at Sèvres, with its quaint old village houses, and its bridge across the Seine to another village, seeing what could be seen of its manufactory, its water-mill where the clay was ground, or its woody island amidst the river, the earlier part of the day was spent. Then turning to make a wide circuit into the Versailles road again, where the afternoon was to bring Sir Godfrey, the carriage passed at leisure through the quieter country that slopes and rolls westward from the Seine. It was scarce country, indeed, where no hedgerows seemed to break up the wide spaces, no field-gates or clustered farms, nor half-sequestered hamlets, with the sprinkling on of solitary cottage and quiet house toward the next, where the church spire should rise, or tower; but sometimes with no division from the wide crops, save the lines of bushy pollards, they rolled over the paved roadway; again between continual park walls or wooden palisade, from which suddenly it would burst on the space about a large square village, with its cabaret and sign-board of the _Lion d’or_ or _d’argent_, its old fountain-well, and double row of trees, noisy, and alive with children, while another road brought through it the market-life from Paris. Though over the nearest wood would peep the white turrets of chateaus, peaked with purple slate, or tin, or gilding, like chandeliers extinguished in the light of day; and near to them were the little stunted churches, with their rounded ends, the squat towers that had lids to them like pots and vases, or the mean belfries perched on the roofs; where the church-yard was blooming with flowers that made its cypresses and yews look gloomier, and the small lonely curacy near it, snowing the cross on some wide gable, had an air of pious seclusion from the world. And still the parks spread round; the woods, with formal alleys striking through them, widened and surged outward, downward, into vale and over height; sometimes opening to let the high road pass on with its vehicles and pedestrians, or the traffic that seemed greater for its confinement,—oftener to show the terraces and bowers of still nobler mansions than before, till the country appeared fading away. They had forgotten their forenoon disappointment: the girl’s eyes sparkled as the sweet sense of being out of Paris grew, in spite of all it held in it; placid, tranquil, her mother leant