A little later the Englishman went out into the garden of the hotel, meaning to start for a walk. But he espied a party of young people gathered about the new lawn-tennis court where instead of the languid and dishevelled trifling, with a broken net and a wretched court, that was once supposed to attract English visitors, he had been already astonished to find Austrians and Hungarians--both girls and boys--playing a game quite up to the average of a good English club. The growing athleticism and independence, indeed, of the foreign girl, struck, for Winnington, the note of change in this mid-European spectacle more clearly than anything else. It was some ten years since he had been abroad in August, a month he had been always accustomed to spend in Scotch visits; and these young girls, with whom the Tyrol seemed to swarm, of all European nationalities other than English, still in or just out of the schoolroom; hatless and fearless; with their knapsacks on their backs, sometimes with ice-axes in their hands; climbing peaks and passes with their fathers and brothers; playing lawn-tennis like young men, and shewing their shapely forms sometimes, when it was a question of attacking the heights, in knicker-bocker costume, and at other times in fresh white dresses and bright-coloured jerseys, without a hint of waist; these young Atalantas, budding and bloomed, made the strongest impression upon him, as of a new race. Where had he been all these years? He felt himself a kind of Rip van Winkle--face to face at forty-one with a generation unknown to him. No one of course could live in England, and not be aware of the change which has passed over English girls in the same direction. But the Englishman always tacitly assumes that the foreigner is far behind him in all matters of open-air sport and physical development. Winnington had soon confessed the touch of national arrogance in his own surprise; and was now the keen and much attracted spectator. On one of the grounds he saw the little German girl--Euphrosyne, as he had already dubbed her--having a lesson from a bullying elder brother. The youth, amazed at his own condescension, scolded his sister perpetually, and at last gave her up in despair, vowing that she would never be any good, and he was not going to waste his time in teaching such a ninny. Euphrosyne sat down beside the court, with tears in her pretty eyes, her white feet crossed, her dark head drooping; and two girl companions, aged about sixteen or seventeen, like herself, came up to comfort her. "I could soon shew you how to improve your service, Mademoiselle," said Winnington, smiling, as he passed her. Euphrosyne looked up startled, but at sight of the handsome middle-aged Englishman, whom she unkindly judged to be not much younger than her father, she timidly replied:-- "It is hateful, Monsieur, to be so stupid as I am!"