The landlord and his wife had heard this colloquy, for the lady spoke at the open window. They advanced, and the guard threw wide the door. "Will you carry my little one?" said the lady to Mrs. Bent. "I fear she is going to be ill, and I do not care to take her on farther. Can I be accommodated with a good apartment here?" "The best rooms we have, ma'am, are at your service; and you will find them excellent, though I say it myself," returned Mrs. Bent, receiving the child into her arms. "Marie fatiguée," plaintively called out the little thing, who seemed about three years old. "Marie ne peut marcher." The lady reassured her in the same language, and alighted. She was a tall, ladylike young woman of apparently some six-and-twenty years, with soft, fair hair, and a pleasing face that wore signs of care, or weariness: or perhaps both. Mrs. Bent carried the child into the parlour; John followed with a large hand-reticule made of plaited black-and-white straw, and the guard put two trunks in the passage, a large one and a small one. "I am en voyage," said the lady, addressing Mrs. Bent--and it may be remarked that, though speaking English with fluency, and with very little foreign accent, she now and then substituted a French word, or a whole sentence as though the latter were more familiar to her in everyday life--and of which John Bent and his wife did not understand a syllable. "But we have voyaged far, and the sea-crossing was frightfully rough, and I fear I have brought my little one on too quickly: so it may be well to halt here for a short time, and keep her quiet. I hope your hotel is not crowded with company?" "There's nobody at all staying in it just now, ma'am," said Mrs. Bent. "We don't have many indoor visitors at the winter season." "And this snow is not good," said the stranger; "I mean not good for voyagers. I might have put off my journey had I thought it would come. When I left my home, the warm spring sun was shining, and the trees were budding." "We have had fine warm weather here, too," said Mrs. Bent; "it changed again a week ago to winter: not but what we had the sun out bright to-day. This dear little thing seems delicate, ma'am." "Not generally. But she is fatigued, you see, and has a touch of fever. We must make her some tisane." "We'll soon get her right again," said Mrs. Bent, gently; for with children, of whom she was very fond, she lost all her sharpness. "Poor little lamb! And so you've come from over the water, ma'am!--and the sea was rough!--and did this little one suffer?" "Oh, pray do not talk of that terrible sea! I thought I must have died. To look at, nothing more beautiful; but to be on it--ah, Ciel!" She shuddered and shrugged her shoulders with the recollection. There was something peculiarly soft and winning in the quiet tones of her voice; something attractive altogether in her features and their sad expression.