The two young people went a little in advance, for they heard Miss Betsy beginning to talk half aloud to herself, as was often her custom, and they had no wish to overhear her dreamings. "Good creature!" said Mary, with her gentle voice; "the journey has quite unsettled her. She always used to have strange ideas, but in England they took an innocent political direction; but with her first step on the continent arose this strange fancy of inventing experiences, which has already indeed given us much anxiety on the journey, but which has perhaps as often afforded an excuse for a hearty laugh." "This fantastic state of being must have suited her charmingly when she was younger," said Theodore; "older people generally discover that they have quite enough to do to meet adventures as they happen, and are by no means inclined to seek them. It is to be hoped that she will soon be as little in earnest with her new Roman friend, as he seems to have been with her from the beginning." "I saw them both returning home. He was a good-looking man, with rather insolent, but still fine eyes, and much younger than she is." "What restrained you from giving an opinion on the question which Miss Betsy proposed?" asked Theodore, after a pause. "Which one?" "Whether individuals of different nations are suited to each other?" Mary was silent for a while. "The more people want from each other," she said, at last, "and the more they wish to give each other, the closer the connection between them ought to be--at least, I think so." "And even, I once knew an Englishman who had married a creole, they both took life easily and gaily. He was happy at having a handsome wife, and she appeared satisfied because he could shower wealth upon her. And yet there was always something between them, something climatic, live where they would. They were never really happy with each other." "They were from different zones. But if they both had had northern blood----" "It may be so; and yet I can understand it by my own feelings. I was brought up amongst the mountains, and have only accustomed myself by slow degrees to the soft Roman air. Now it is winter; without there lies the fair pure snow. When we are seated this evening with my father and mother by the fire, and the kettle sings, and I see all that belong to my life around me, I could easily be _entirely_ happy. And yet I confess that it is just at that moment that the home-longing might seize me for the old country-house in England, where the old oak-trees stand before the window, and the snowy field lies behind the garden, far less beautiful than the campagna beyond them, and the English sky shrouded with heavy mist, so unlike this clear horizon, which should cheer and refresh me. Yet it is foreign, and something foreign like this might exist between people." They had hitherto carried on the conversation in English. He now began to talk German, which she too spoke perfectly, with the exception of a slight accent.