first love to a great
sorrow.

Occasionally a certain distinguished old man of soldier-like aspect
would pass them on horseback, and gaze at their two tall British
figures with a look of curious and benign interest, as if he
mentally wished them well, and well away from this drear limbo of
penitence and exile and expiation.

They learnt that he was French, and a famous general, and that his
name was Changarnier; and they understood that public virtue has to
be atoned for.

And he somehow got into the habit of bowing to them with a good
smile, and they would smile and bow back again. Beyond this they
never exchanged a word, but this little outward show and ceremony of
kindly look and sympathetic gesture always gave them a pleasant
moment and helped to pass the morning.

All the people they met were to Lady Caroline like people in a
dream: silent priests; velvet-footed nuns, who were much to her
taste; quiet peasant women, in black cloaks and hoods, driving
bullock-carts or carts drawn by dogs, six or eight of these
inextricably harnessed together and panting for dear life;
blue-bloused men in French caps, but bigger and blonder than
Frenchmen, and less given to epigrammatic repartee, with mild, blue,
beery eyes, _a fleur de tete_, and a look of health and stolid
amiability; sturdy green-coated little soldiers with cock-feathered
brigand hats of shiny black, the brim turned up over the right eye
and ear that they might the more conveniently take a good aim at the
foe before he skedaddled at the mere sight of them; fat, comfortable
burgesses and their wives, so like their ancestors who drink beer
out of long glasses and smoke long clay pipes on the walls of the
Louvre and the National Gallery that they seemed like old friends;
and quaint old heavy children who didn't make much noise!

And whenever they spoke French to you, these good people, they said
"savez-vous?" every other second; and whenever they spoke Flemish to
each other it sounded so much like your own tongue as it is spoken in
the north of England that you wondered why on earth you couldn't
understand a single word.

Now and then, from under a hood, a handsome dark face with Spanish
eyes would peer out--eloquent of the past history of the Low
Countries, which Barty knew much better than I. But I believe there
was once a Spanish invasion or occupation of some kind, and I dare
say the fair Belgians are none the worse for it to-day. (It might
even have b