'Why, Henrietta, you are not one bit changed; you actually look younger than ever,' exclaimed Mrs. Fordyce, when the first agitation, of the meeting was over. 'Positively, you look as young as you did in Brussels eight-and-twenty years ago. Just look at me. Yes, these are my daughters; and this is Gladys Graham, whom I am so anxious to see under your care.' The bright, sharp eyes of Madame Bonnemain took in the three girls at one comprehensive glance, then she shook her head with a half-arch, half-regretful smile. 'A year ago such a prospect would have seemed to lift me to paradise. Times have been hard with me, Isabel--never harder than last year; but it is always the darkest hour before the dawn, as we used to say in Brussels, when the days seemed interminably awful just before vacation. Two carriages we must have for so many women. Ah, I am so glad my house is quite, quite empty.' Beckoning to the drivers of two rather rickety old carriages, somewhat resembling in form the old English chaise, she put all the girls in one, and seated herself beside Mrs. Fordyce in the other. 'Now we can talk. The children will be happier without us. How good, how very good, it is to see you again, Isabel, and how my heart warms to you even yet.' 'It was your own fault, Henrietta, that we did not meet oftener. You have always refused my invitations--sometimes without much ceremony,' said Mrs. Fordyce rather reproachfully. 'Pride, my dear--Scotch pride; that is what kept me vegetating in this awful place when my heart was in the Highlands. Tell me about Gairloch and Helensburgh, and dear old Glasgow. I have never forgotten it, though I was too proud to parade my poverty in its streets.' 'I will tell you nothing, Henrietta, till I hear what all this means. Have you really been worse off lately?' 'My dear, for twelve months I have not had a creature in my house,' said Madame Bonnemain, and her face grew graver and older in its outline,--'positively not a creature. Bruges has gone down as a place for English residents, and I don't wonder at it.' 'It is very beautiful, Henrietta,' said Mrs. Fordyce quickly,--'so quaint; everything about it a picture.' 'People can't live on quaintness, my love, and the narrowness and tyranny of it is intolerable. I hate it. When I go away from Bruges I never want to set eyes on it again as long as I live.' Her eyes shone, her cheeks grew red, her little mouth set itself in quite a determined curve. Mrs. Fordyce perceived that she had some serious umbrage against the old Flemish town--a grudge which would never be wiped away. And yet it _was_ very picturesque, with its grey old houses, its quaint spires, its flat fields spreading away from the canal, its rows of stately poplar trees.