An incident happened at this period, to which Elizabeth paid little attention at the time, engrossed as she was by mortal fears. They had been in quarantine about a fortnight, when, one day, there entered the gloomy precincts of the lazaretto a tribe of English people. Such a horde of men, women, and children, as gives foreigners a lively belief that we islanders are all mad, to migrate in this way, with the young and helpless, from comfortable homes, in search of the dangerous and comfortless. This roving band consisted of the eldest son of an English nobleman and his wife--four children, the eldest being six years old--a governess--three nursery-maids, two lady's maids, and a sufficient appendage of men-servants. They had all just arrived from viewing the pyramids of Egypt. The noise and bustle--the servants insisting on making everybody comfortable, where comfort was not--the spreading out of all their own camp apparatus--joined to the seeming indifference of the parties chiefly concerned, and the unconstrained astonishment of the Italians--was very amusing. Lord Cecil, a tall, thin, plain, quiet, aristocratic-looking man of middle age, dropped into the first chair--called for his writing-case--began a letter, and saw and heard nothing that was going on. Lady Cecil--who was not pretty, but lively and elegant--was surrounded by her children--_they_ seemed so many little angels, with blooming cheeks and golden hair--the youngest cherub slept profoundly amid the din; the others were looking eagerly out for their dinner.