The day falls, the night comes. On, on, on! There is a bit of
looking-glass opposite me. I can no longer see any thing outside. I have
to sit staring at my own plain, grimed, bored face. In a sudden fury, I
draw the little red silk curtain across my own image. Thank God! I can
no longer see myself. Sir Roger ceases to try his eyes with the print of
the _Westminster_, and closes it.
"I wonder," say I, pouring some eau-de-cologne on my
pocket-handkerchief, and trying to cleanse my face therewith, but only
succeeding in making it a muddy instead of a dusty smudge--"I wonder
whether we shall meet any one we know at Dresden?"
"I should not wonder," replies Sir Roger, cheerfully.
"Is the Hôtel de Saxe the place where most English go?" inquire I,
anxiously. "Ah, you do not know! I must ask Schmidt."
"Yes, do."
"I hope we shall," say I, straining my eyes to make out the objects in
the dark outside. "We have been very unlucky so far, have not we?"
"Are you so anxious to meet people? are you so dull already, Nancy?" he
asks, in that voice of peculiar gentleness which I have already learned
to know hides inward pain.
"Oh, no, no!" cry I, with quick remorse. "Not at all! I have always
_longed_ to travel! At one time Barbara and I were always talking about
it, making plans, you know, of where we would go. I enjoy it, of all
things, especially the pictures--but do not you think it would be
amusing to have some one to talk to at the _tables d'hôte_, some one
English, to laugh at the people with?"
"Yes," he answers, readily, "of course it would. It is quite natural
that you should wish it. I heartily hope we shall. We will go wherever
it is most likely."
After long, _long_ hours of dark rushing, Dresden at last. We drive in
an open carriage through an unknown town, moonlit, silent, and asleep.
German towns go to bed early. We cross the Elbe, in which a second moon,
big and clear as the one in heaven, lies quivering, waving with the
water's wave; then through dim, ghostly streets, and at last--at
last--we pull up at the door of the Hôtel de Saxe, and the sleepy porter
comes out disheveled.
"There is no doubt," say I, aloud, when I find myself alone in my
bedroom, Sir Roger not having yet come up, and the maid having gone to
bed--addressing the remark to the hot water in which I have been bathing
my face, stiff with dirt, and haggard with fatigue. "There is no use
denying it, I _hate_ being married!"
CHAPTER XI.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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