Grounsell detested the Continent, yet he followed them abroad, resolved never to give up an inch of ground uncontested; and although assailed by a thousand slights and petty insults, he stood stoutly up against them all, defying every effort of fine-ladyism, French cookery, homoeopathy, puppyism, and the water-cure, to dislodge him from his position. There was very possibly more of dogged malice in all this than amiability or attachment to his friends; but it is due to the doctor to say that he was no hypocrite, and would never have blinked the acknowledgment if fairly confronted with the charge. Although, if it had not been for my Lady's resentful notice of the ministerial neglect, the whole family would have been snugly domesticated in their beautiful villa beside the Thames at Richmond, she artfully contrived to throw the whole weight of every annoyance they experienced upon every one's shoulders rather than her own; and as she certainly called to her aid no remarkable philosophy against the inconveniences of travel, the budget of her grievances assumed a most imposing bulk. Dressed in the very perfection of a morning costume, her cap, her gloves, her embroidered slippers, all in the most accurate keeping with that assumed air of seclusion by which fine ladies compliment the visitor fortunate enough to be admitted to their presence, Lady Hester sat at a window, occasionally looking from the deep lace that bordered her handkerchief to the picturesque scene of mountain and river that lay before her. A fastidious taste might have found something to be pleased with in either, but assuredly her handsome features evinced no agreeable emotion, and her expression was that of utter ennui and listlessness. At another window sat Sydney Onslow drawing; her brother standing behind her chair, and from time to time adding his counsels, but in a tone studiously low and whispered. “Get that shadow in something deeper, Syd, and you 'll have more effect in the distance.” “What is that I hear about effect and distance?” sighed out my Lady. “You surely are not drawing?” “Only sketching; making a hurried note of that wheel, and the quaint old-fashioned house beside it,” said Sydney, diffidently. “What a refinement of cruelty! The detestable noise of that mill kept me awake all night, and you mean to perpetuate the remembrance by a picture. Pray, be a good child and throw it out of the window.” Sydney looked up in her brother's face, where already a crimson flush of anger was gathering, but before she could reply he spoke for her. “The drawing is for me, Lady Onslow. You 'll. excuse me if I do not consent to the fate you propose for it.” “Let me look at it,” said she, languidly; and the young girl arose and presented the drawing to her. “How droll!” said she, laughing; “I suppose it is peculiar to Germany that water can run up hill.”