waiting train with a pleased realisation of her own independence. Then had come the long and glorious panorama along the Rhine, the frowning castles, the majestic spires of the great Dom, the new types of men and women hurrying backwards and forwards about the busy platforms. During the long hours Nora’s watchful, eager eyes never closed. This, then, was the new world to which she was to open her heart; these, then, the people whose qualities of goodness she was to learn to honour. The first task was easy enough—it was, indeed, a beautiful world. But the people? They were of another type than that to which she was accustomed, and Nora, imbued with the pleasant insular conviction that all English people are tall and handsome, found them so far little to her taste. In truth, a firmly rooted prejudice is not to be overcome in a moment, or even by the wisest precept, and not all Mrs. Ingestre’s eloquence could crush back the half-conscious superiority which her daughter experienced in that stuffy second-class coupé. Her fellow-passengers, be it confessed, were stout and inelegant, and they obviously preferred the window closed—points which were alone quite sufficient to stamp them as belonging to an inferior class. But the chief point was Nora’s own nationality. The mere fact that she was English would have kept her in countenance even when confronted with the whole Imperial family, and, indeed, throughout the journey, with its difficulties, its various encounters with idiotic foreign porters who refuse to understand the English language, no matter how loud it is shouted, she was sustained by a calm and inborn knowledge of her racial superiority. Thus she felt no sense of loneliness or helplessness until the voice shouting "Karlsburg" had hurried her out on to the crowded, bustling platform. There for the first time she felt her own insignificance, her own strangeness. She was really in a foreign country at last, and with all her superiority she stood there a forlorn handful of pretty, despairing girlhood, waiting for the first jabbering, gesticulating savage to rescue her from her perplexity. "_Ach, liebes Kind, da bist du! Willkommen!_" The eager, kindly voice and the cordial embrace were equally sudden and somewhat overwhelming. Steadying her hat from the effects of the shock, Nora turned to find herself held by a short, stout little woman, very out of breath, very excited, who was smiling and nodding at her as though at an old and very dear acquaintance. "Ach! you do not know me?" she interrogated, adding in the same gasp, "But how should you? I am ze old Fräulein Müller—you haf heard of her? Long ago she did teach ze muzzer, and now here is ze daughter—her muzzer every bit of her. _Ach, du lieber Gott im Himmel_! But I must not so much talk. Give ze man your _Gepäckschein, liebes Kind_."