;
and in ten minutes they were trotting up the Southern Road.

Bob did not hurry the horse, there being many things to say and hear, for
which the present situation was admirably suited. The sun shone
occasionally into Matilda's face as they drove on, its rays picking out
all her features to a great nicety. Her eyes would have been called
brown, but they were really eel-colour, like many other nice brown eyes;
they were well-shaped and rather bright, though they had more of a broad
shine than a sparkle. She had a firm, sufficient nose, which seemed to
say of itself that it was good as noses go. She had rather a picturesque
way of wrapping her upper in her lower lip, so that the red of the latter
showed strongly. Whenever she gazed against the sun towards the distant
hills, she brought into her forehead, without knowing it, three short
vertical lines--not there at other times--giving her for the moment
rather a hard look. And in turning her head round to a far angle, to
stare at something or other that he pointed out, the drawn flesh of her
neck became a mass of lines. But Bob did not look at these things,
which, of course, were of no significance; for had she not told him, when
they compared ages, that she was a little over two-and-twenty?

As Nature was hardly invented at this early point of the century, Bob's
Matilda could not say much about the glamour of the hills, or the
shimmering of the foliage, or the wealth of glory in the distant sea, as
she would doubtless have done had she lived later on; but she did her
best to be interesting, asking Bob about matters of social interest in
the neighbourhood, to which she seemed quite a stranger.

'Is your watering-place a large city?' she inquired when they mounted the
hill where the Overcombe folk had waited for the King.

'Bless you, my dear--no! 'Twould be nothing if it wasn't for the Royal
Family, and the lords and ladies, and the regiments of soldiers, and the
frigates, and the King's messengers, and the actors and actresses, and
the games that go on.'

At the words 'actors and actresses,' the innocent young thing pricked up
her ears.

'Does Elliston pay as good salaries this summer as in--?'

'O, you know about it then? I thought--'

'O no, no! I have heard of Budmouth--read in the papers, you know, dear
Robert, about the doings there, and the actors and actresses, you know.'

'Yes, yes, I see. Well, I have been away from England a long time, and