She was obliged to wait there for some lawyers or men of business that were to follow her with papers to sign; and although Lord George did his best to persuade her that she might as well come on with us,--that Bonn was only fifteen miles farther,--she was firm, and said that "Old Mr. For-dyce was a great prig, and when she had once named Cologne for their meeting, she would have travelled from Naples rather than break the appointment." I own to you, there was a tenacity and determination in all that which pleased me. Maybe the great charm of it was that it was very unlike what I 'd have done myself! The whole way to Bonn we talked of nothing but her, the discussion being all the more unconstrained that Lord George had stayed behind, and was only to come up the next morning. We were agreed upon a number of points: her beauty, her elegance, the grace and fascination of her manner, and her high breeding; but we took different views as to her condition,--Mrs. D. and the girls thinking that she was married, James and I standing out for widowhood. Lord George joined us the next day; and although he could have resolved our doubts at once, Mary Anne stopped all inquiry, by assuring us that nothing was so hopelessly vulgar as to display any ignorance about the family or connections of people of rank. "If she be in the peerage, we ought to know her, and all about her. She is, of course, some Augusta Louisa, b. 18 and dash; m. to the Honorable Leopold Conway Gore Hampton, third son, and so on." In a word, Tom, we had the whole family tree before us, from its old gnarled root to its last bud, and ours the shame if we were ignorant of its botanical properties! A few quiet humdrum days of Bonn existence had almost obliterated our memory of the charming widow, and we were beginning to "train off" our attachments to fashionable life, when, in all the splashing and whip-cracking of foreign posting, up dashes the dark green britschka to our hotel one fine evening; and before we could well recognize the carriage, the fair owner herself was making the tour of the Dodd family, embracing and hand-shaking, as age and sex dictated! I wish any physiologist would explain why the English, that are so proverbial for a cold and chilling demeanor at home, grow at once so cordial when they come abroad. Whether it be the fear of the damp, or the swell mob, I can't tell, but everybody in England goes about with his hands in his pockets, and only nods to a friend when he meets him; whereas here you start with a grin at fifty yards off, then off goes your hat with a flourish, that, if you have any tact, what with shaking your head, and looking overcome with delight, occupies you till you come up with him, when your greeting grows more enthusiastic,--lucky if it does not finish with a kiss on both cheeks.