Amazement held Claudia still for a moment; she could scarcely believe in such utter disregard of her feelings. At last, in a voice vibrating with ill-suppressed indignation, she said:

"My lord, the air of this room makes me ill. If you must smoke, can you not do so somewhere else?"

"Where?" questioned his lordship, taking the pipe from his mouth for an instant.

"Is there not a smoking room, reading room, or something of the sort, for gentlemen's accommodation?"

"In this place? Ha, ha, ha! Well, there is the taproom!"

"Then why not go there?" inquired Claudia, who had no very clear idea of what the taproom really was.

Lord Vincent's face flushed at what he seemed to think an intentional affront.

"I can go into the street," he said.

And he arose and put on his greatcoat and his cap, and turned up the collar of his coat and turned down the fall of his cap, so that but little of his face would be seen, and so walked out. Then Claudia raised the window to ventilate the room, and rang the bell to summon the waiter.

"Take this service away and send the chambermaid to me," she said to him when he came.

And a few minutes after he had cleared the table and left the room the chambermaid, accompanied by old Katie, entered.

"Is there a dressing room connected with this chamber?" Lady Vincent inquired.

"Law, no, mum! there isn't sich a place in the house," said the chambermaid.

"This is intolerable! You may go; my own servants will wait on me."

The girl went out.

"Unpack my traveling bag and lay out my things, Katie," said Lady Vincent, when she was left alone with her nurse.

But the old woman raised her hands, and rolled up her eyes, exclaiming:

"Well, Miss Claudia, child!--I mean my ladyship, ma'am!--if this is Ingland, I never want to see it again the longest day as ever I live!"

"Liverpool is not England, Katie."

"Live-a-pool, is it? More like Die-a-pool!" grumbled old Katie, as she assisted her lady to change her traveling dress for a loose wrapper.

"Now, what have you had to eat, my ladyship?"

"Nothing, Katie. I felt as if I could not eat anything cooked in this ill-looking house."

"Nothing to eat! I'll go right straight downstairs and make you some tea and toast myself," said Katie.

And she made good her words by bringing a delicate little repast, of which Claudia gratefully partook.

And then Katie, with an old nurse's tenderness, saw her mistress comfortably to bed, and cleared and darkened the room and left her to repose.

But Claudia did not sleep. Her thoughts were too busy with the subject of Lord Vincent's strange conduct from the time that he had at Niagara received those three suspicious letters up to this time, when with his face hid he was walking up and down the streets of Liverpool.

That he sought concealment she felt assured by many circumstances: his coming to this obscure tavern; his choosing to take his meals and smoke his pipe in his bedroom; and his walking out with his face muffled--all of which was in direct antagonism to Lord Vincent's fastidious habits; and, finally, his taking a whole carriage in the railway train, for no other purpose than to have himself and his party entirely isolated from their fellow-passengers.

Lord Vincent came in early, and, thanks to the narcotic qualities of the ale, he soon fell asleep.

Claudia had scarcely dropped into a doze before, at the dismal hour of three o'clock in the morning, they were roused up to get ready for the train. They made a hurried toilet and ate a hasty breakfast, and then set out for the station.

It was a raw, damp, foggy morning. The atmosphere seemed as dense and as white as milk. No one could see a foot in advance. And Claudia wondered how the cabmen managed to get along at all.

They reached the station just as the train was about to start, and had barely time to hurry into the carriage that had been engaged for them before the whistle shrieked and they were off. Fortunately Frisbie had sent the luggage on in advance, and got it ticketed.

The carriage had four back and four front seats. Lord and Lady Vincent occupied two of the back seats, and their four servants the front ones. As they went on the fog really seemed to thicken. They traveled slowly and stopped often. And Claudia, in surprise, remarked upon these facts.

"One might as well be in a stage--for speed," she complained.

"It is the parliamentary train," he replied.

"I have heard you say that before; but I do not know what you mean by 'parliamentary' as applied to railway trains."

"It is the cheap train, the slow train, the people's train; in fact, one that, in addition to first- and second-class carriages, drags behind it an interminable length of rough cars, in which the lower orders travel," said his lordship.

"But why is it called the 'parliamentary'?"

"Because it was instituted by act of parliament for the accommodation of the people, or perhaps because it is so heavy and slow."

On they went, hour after hour, stopping every three or four miles, while the fog seemed still to condense and whiten.

At noon the train reached York, and stopped twenty minutes for refreshment. Lord Vincent did not leave the carriage, but sent his valet out to the station restaurant to procure what was needful for his party. And while the passengers were all hurrying to and fro, and looking in at the carriage, he drew the curtains of his windows, and sat back far in his seat.

Claudia would gladly have left the train and spent the interval in contemplating, even if it were only the outside of the ancient cathedral of which she had read and heard so much.

Lord Vincent assured her there was no time to lose in sight-seeing then, but promised that she should visit York at some future period.

And the train started again. They began to leave the fog behind them as they approached the seacoast. They soon came in sight of the North Sea, beside which the railway ran for some hundred miles. Here all was bright and clear. And Claudia for a time forgot all the suspicions and anxieties that disturbed her mind, and with all a stranger's interest gazed on the grandeur of the scenery and dreamed over the associations it awakened.

Here "lofty Seaton-Delaval" was pointed out to her. And Tinemouth, famed in song for its "haughty prioress," and "Holy Isle," memorable for the inhumation of Constance de Beverly.

At sunset they crossed Berwick bridge and entered Scotland.

Claudia was entirely lost in gazing on the present landscape, and dreaming of its past history. Here the association between scenery and poetry was perfect. Nature is ever young--and this was the very scene and the very hour described in Scott's immortal poem, and as Claudia gazed she murmured the lines:

"Day set on Norham's castled steep, And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, And Cheviot's mountains lone; The battled towers, the donjon keep, The flanking walls that round it sweep, In yellow luster shone,"

Yes! it was the very scene, viewed at the very hour, just as the poet described it to have been two hundred years before, when

"Marmion, Lord of Fontenaye, Of Lutterward and Scrivelbaye, Of Tamworth tower and town,"

crossed with his knightly train into Scotland. There was the setting sun burnishing the brown tops of the Cheviot hills; gilding the distant ruined towers of Norham Castle, and lighting up the waters of the Tweed.