"O no, don't say that," said Lady Mitford. "You misjudge yourself; I am sure you do, dear Miss Gillespie, or why should you have felt so much for me, and done me such a service? Do not write hard things against yourself. I will do this--it may succeed; but whether it succeeds or not, I shall ever be grateful to you, ever bless you for this act; and you will let me serve you in turn--you will tell me your wishes, and let me try to carry them out. You said you would tell me how you have been engaged since you left Redmoor." "Thank you, dear Lady Mitford," said Miss Gillespie, in a low deep tone; "but you cannot serve me. I told you there was a gulf fixed between you, the patrician lady, and me. I am an actress, and my stage-name is Constance Greenwood." Lady Mitford wrote the letter to Sir Charles, as her strange visitor had counselled her to do. She suffered much in writing it; she hoped much from its effect. Time rolled on, and she knew that Sir Charles must have received the letter; then she counted the days which must elapse before the answer could arrive, and, arming herself with patience, she waited. CHAPTER XXXI. AMONG THE SPRINGS. It was the month of September, and the little town of Baden was full. It is now the big town of Baden, and is still, during its season, filled to overflowing; but the company is by no means so select, so pleasant, so agreeable as it used to be. The _vor-eisenbahn_ Baden was as superior to the present excursionists' resort as was the ante-railway Ascot Meeting to what now is merely a succession of Derby-days in Bucks. Then, when you posted in from Strasburg, or arrived in the _eilwagen_, from deadly-lively Carlsruhe, you found Mr. Rheinboldt, the landlord of the Badischer Hof, attended by the stoutest, the best-tempered, and the stupidest even of German porters, coming forward to meet you with the pleasantest of greetings. You had written on beforehand if you were a wise man, and your old room was ready--one of that little row of snug dormitories set apart for bachelors, and looking on to the trim garden. You had a wash, with more water than you had met with since you left home (they were beginning to understand the English mania for soap-and-water at the Badischer Hof even so long ago), and you made your toilette and came down to the five-o'clock _table-d'hôte_, where you found most of the people who had been there the previous season, and many of their friends whom they had induced to come. Most of the people knew each other or of each other, and there was a sociability among them which the railway has utterly annihilated. Now London sends her bagmen and Paris her _lorettes_; but in those days, if "our Mr. Johnson" got as far as Parry by way of Cally or Bolong, he was looked upon as an intrepid voyager, while very few Parisian ladies, save those of the best class, came into the Grand Duke's territory.