In the first place Baroness Sonnenburg is an Englishwoman, and Sir Charles knows her quite well. So he offered to drive us out to the Schloss and introduce us, telling us it would be quite _comme il faut_, and that the Sonnenburgs would be only too delighted to meet us. The Vicomte occupied the vacant seat in the landau, and we started immediately after lunch, for we had over twenty miles to drive. To know what dust is you must come to Switzerland in August; the road was like driving through sand, we were powdered with it, a nasty, white, itchy powder, and the flies, having devoured the horses which flew along maddened with pain, came to add their sting and buzzing to our own sufferings from the dust. I nearly shrieked with the discomfort of it all, and longed for my balcony at the National. The Vicomte began to talk of love to me, but knowing the danger of such a subject I peevishly begged him to desist, and a huge bottle-green fly, with a most irritating buzz, having drawn blood from his cheek, the Vicomte became as peevish as I. It seemed as if the journey would never end, which made the thought of the return to Lucerne _épouvantable_, and we were none of us in a good mood when a great yellow and black building, whose walls were like a draught-board, suddenly loomed out of a forest of pine trees on the brow of a steep cliff. {_Warm Welcome_} When we drove up to the front door two footmen in livery helped us out of the carriage, and I could have cried from the nervousness that the drive had fretted me into. However, we found a maid with brushes and water and perfumes, and when we were at all presentable again, another carriage drove up with Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Isaacs and Rosalie, and their Austrian Count. They were in as bad a temper as we were from the dust and the flies, and I heard Mrs. Johnson say that if "Mrs. Sonnenburg hadn't been a baroness" she would never have come. We passed down a long hall whose walls were covered with family portraits, more than enough to make up the twenty-four quarterings of the Sonnenburg arms. At the end of the hall was a room into which we were shown by a footman. A grand-looking man, who was introduced by Sir Charles as Baron Sonnenburg, gave us the warmest welcome in English, and led us across the room where we were presented to his wife and mother. Baroness Sonnenburg spoke English with an accent which was not affected, for she told us she had not been in England for over twenty years. She was one of the Trevorleys of Devonshire, and the present baronet is her first cousin. I doubt if she ever heard the name of Paquin, and I suppose her clothes are made by a seamstress in Lucerne, yet there was no disguising the gentility of her appearance and the breeding of her manners. {_A Pretty Custom_}