s
Rome does; so I tried the baths once. I found them unpleasantly smooth
and oily. I do not freckle, but if I did, I think I should prefer
freckles.

We walked much on the terrace--the inevitable dawdling promenade of all
German watering-places--it reeked of Serene Highness. We also drove out
among the low wooded hills which bound the Rhine valley. The majority of
the visitors, I found, were ladies--Court ladies, most of them; all
there for their complexions, but all anxious to assure me privately they
had come for what they described as 'nervous debility.' I divided them
at once into two classes: half of them never had and never would have a
complexion at all; the other half had exceptionally smooth and beautiful
skins, of which they were obviously proud, and whose pink-and-white
peach-blossom they thought to preserve by assiduous bathing. It was
vanity working on two opposite bases. There was a sprinkling of men,
however, who were really there for a sufficient reason--wounds or
serious complaints; while a few good old sticks, porty and whisty, were
in attendance on invalid wives or sisters.

[Illustration: HE CAST A HASTY GLANCE AT US.]

From the beginning I noticed that Lady Georgina went peering about all
over the place, as if she were hunting for something she had lost, with
her long-handled tortoise-shell glasses perpetually in evidence--the
'aristocratic outrage' I called them--and that she eyed all the men with
peculiar attention. But I took no open notice of her little weakness. On
our second day at the Spa, I was sauntering with her down the chief
street--'a beastly little hole, my dear; not a decent shop where one can
buy a reel of thread or a yard of tape in the place!'--when I observed a
tall and handsome young man on the opposite side of the road cast a
hasty glance at us, and then sneak round the corner hurriedly. He was a
loose-limbed, languid-looking young man, with large, dreamy eyes, and a
peculiarly beautiful and gentle expression; but what I noted about him
most was an odd superficial air of superciliousness. He seemed always to
be looking down with scorn on that foolish jumble, the universe. He
darted away so rapidly, however, that I hardly discovered all this just
then. I piece it out from subsequent observations.

Later in the day, we chanced to pass a _cafe_, where three young
exquisites sat sipping Rhine wines after the fashion of the country. One
of them, with a gold-tipped cigarette held