inued to blush as it seemed with
a strange metallic bloom: but the rest of her face, which had used to
rival the lily in whiteness, became of a jonquil colour. Her eyes stared
round with a ghastly expression. Harry was alarmed at the agony depicted
in the charmer's countenance; which not only exhibited pain, but was
exceedingly unbecoming. Madame Bernstein also at length remarked
her niece's indisposition, and asked her if sitting backwards in the
carriage made her ill, which poor Maria confessed to be the fact. On
this, the elder lady was forced to make room for her niece on her own
side, and, in the course of the drive to Farnham, uttered many gruff,
disagreeable, sarcastic remarks to her fellow-traveller, indicating her
great displeasure that Maria should be so impertinent as to be ill on
the first day of a journey.

When they reached the Bush Inn at Farnham, under which name a famous
inn has stood in Farnham town for these three hundred years--the dear
invalid retired with her maid to her bedroom: scarcely glancing a
piteous look at Harry as she retreated, and leaving the lad's mind in a
strange confusion of dismay and sympathy. Those yellow, yellow cheeks,
those livid wrinkled eyelids, that ghastly red--how ill his blessed
Maria looked! And not only how ill, but how--away, horrible thought,
unmanly suspicion! He tried to shut the idea out from his mind. He had
little appetite for supper, though the jolly Baroness partook of that
repast as if she had had no dinner; and certainly as if she had no
sympathy with her invalid niece.

She sent her major-domo to see if Lady Maria would have anything from
the table. The servant brought back word that her ladyship was still
very unwell, and declined any refreshment.

"I hope she intends to be well to-morrow morning," cried Madame
Bernstein, rapping her little hand on the table. "I hate people to be
ill in an inn, or on a journey. Will you play piquet with me, Harry?"

Harry was happy to be able to play piquet with his aunt. "That absurd
Maria!" says Madame Bernstein, drinking from a great glass of negus,
"she takes liberties with herself. She never had a good constitution.
She is forty-one years old. All her upper teeth are false, and she can't
eat with them. Thank Heaven, I have still got every tooth in my head.
How clumsily you deal, child!"

Deal clumsily indeed! Had a dentist been extracting Harry's own grinders
at that moment, would he have been expected to mind hi