nce of our young
Roman. So we three went to London Bridge Station at an early hour,
proposing to breathe the fresh air of Greenwich Park before dinner. And,
at London Bridge, by the most singular coincidence, Lady Kew's carriage
drove up to the Brighton entrance, and Miss Ethel and her maid stepped
out of the brougham.

When Miss Newcome and her maid entered the Brighton station, did Mr.
Clive, by another singular coincidence, happen also to be there? What
more natural and dutiful than that he should go and see his aunt, Miss
Honeyman? What more proper than that Miss Ethel should pass the Saturday
and Sunday with her sick father; and take a couple of wholesome nights'
rest after those five weary past evenings, for each of which we may
reckon a couple of soirees and a ball? And that relations should travel
together, the young lady being protected by her femme-de-chambre; that
surely, as every one must allow, was perfectly right and proper.

That a biographer should profess to know everything which passes, even
in a confidential talk in a first-class carriage between two lovers,
seems perfectly absurd; not that grave historians do not pretend to
the same wonderful degree of knowledge--reporting meetings of the most
occult of conspirators; private interviews between monarchs and their
ministers, even the secret thoughts and motives of those personages,
which possibly the persons themselves did not know;--all for which the
present writer will pledge his known character for veracity is, that on
a certain day certain parties had a conversation, of which the upshot
was so-and-so. He guesses, of course, at a great deal of what took
place; knowing the characters, and being informed at some time of their
meeting. You do not suppose that I bribed the femme-de-chambre, or
that those two City gents, who sate in the same carriage with our young
friends, and could not hear a word they said, reported their talk to
me? If Clive and Ethel had had a coupe to themselves, I would yet boldly
tell what took place, but the coupe was taken by other three young City
gents who smoked the whole way.

"Well, then," the bonnet begins close up to the hat, "tell me, sir, is
it true that you were so very much epris of the Miss Freemans at Rome;
and that afterwards you were so wonderfully attentive to the third Miss
Baliol? Did you draw her portrait? You know you drew her portrait. You
painters always pretend to admire girls with auburn hair, because