110 STRAY -AW AYS 



looked at us with furtive curiosity, and received both 

 Enghsh and German blandishments at a polite dis- 

 tance ; how much more unapproachable would be 

 the Danish aristocracy in its mystic grades and 

 conventions ! 



Grasping our evening shoes we set forth, at the 

 hour when at home we should hardly have got up 

 the lawn-tennis net. We were tired from a long 

 morning and a third-class carriage ; we were spirit- 

 less from want of luncheon, yet our appetites were 

 jaded by the gingerbread biscuits and fruits of the 

 journey; in fact, no worse contributions than we 

 could have been offered to any dinner-party. By a 

 short walk through clumps of young pines, and a 

 windy struggle along a straight carriage-drive, we 

 came to a large house, standing dignified and ornate 

 among the roses and bright flower-beds of its pleasure- 

 grounds ; a typical foreign country villa, with all the 

 foreign air of elegant leisure and perpetual holiday, 

 very different from the grim practicality of so many 

 Irish country houses, built as they are according to 

 the primary conception that a house should be a 

 square box, and that its architectural features should 

 be disposed in stern imitation of the human coun- 

 tenance, a door in the middle with a window on each 

 side. 



Within were spacious rooms of an old-fashioned 

 solidity and plainness that cared nothing for cheap 

 draperies, and trusted for ornament to pictures, to 

 splendid china, and to the throng of flowers that gave 

 to the air the unspeakable refinement of their per- 

 fume. Coming towards us across the pale, satiny 

 parquet, was an old lady with white hair and dark 

 eyes and straight brows, and a welcome whose kind- 

 ness and unconventionality made us aware that 

 great ladies are of the same pattern in every country. 



