At the King's Head Inn at Thatcham on the Bath Road a post chaise drew up, but with no great flourish, for the postilion knew that his only passenger was a lady, and he had no intention of pulling his horses on their haunches merely for the sake of impressing a lady. In his youth he had made many flourishes of such a type, but had failed to win an extra crown from a traveller of this sex. The groom, who advanced with some degree of briskness from the stable-yard, became more languid in his movements when he perceived that only a lady was descending from the chaise. He knew that briskness on the part of a groom never caused a coin to spring from the purse of a lady. The landlord, however, taking a more hopeful view of the harvest prospects of the solitary lady as a guest--he had lived in London, and had heard of assignations in which the (temporarily) solitary lady became a source of profit to the inn-keeper--made a pretence of bustling out to assist the occupant of the chaise to alight, bowing elaborately when he perceived that the lining of her travel-ling-cloak was of quilted silk, and once again as she tripped very daintily over the cobble-stones in front of the King's Head, and smiled very bewitchingly within the satin frame of her hood. The landlord had a notion that he had seen her face and her smile before. He carried with him the recollection of a good many faces and smiles within the frame-work of quilted satin hoods. “Madam, you honour my poor house,” he said in his best London manner as the lady passed through the porch. “'T is rarely that a person of your ladyship's quality--” “Spare us good lord--good landlord,” cried the lady in an accent that had a certain amount of Hibernian persuasiveness about it. “Spare us your remarks about our quality.'T is two horses and not four that brought me hither. It's of your quality, sir, that I'd fain have a taste. If I do n't have breakfast within an hour, I honestly believe that my death will be at your door, and where will your compliments be then, my good man?” “Your ladyship is pleased to be facetious,” said the landlord, throwing open the door of the public room with as great a flourish as if he were giving admittance to sixty-foot _salle_, instead of a twenty-foot inn parlour. He looked closely at his visitor as she passed through: her voice sounded strangely familiar to him. “'T is a poor room for one, who, I doubt not, is no stranger to the noblest mansions,” he added. “There's no one better accustomed to the noblest mansions than myself,” said the lady, going to the looking-glass that occupied a place in a panel between the windows, throwing back her hood, and then arranging her hair.