We reached Abbeville to dinner, and adjourned to the beautiful little garden of the inn for our coffee; the evening was so delightful that I proposed to walk on the Paris road, until the coming up of the carriage, which required a screw, or a washer, or some such trifle as always occurs in French posting.  To this la chere mamma objected, she being tired, but added, that Isabella and I might go on, and that she would take us up in half an hour.  This was an arrangement so very agreeable and unlooked for by me, that I pressed Miss Bingham as far as I well could, and at last succeeded in overcoming her scruples, and permitting me to shawl her.  One has always a tremendous power of argument with the uninitiated abroad, by a reference to a standard of manners and habits totally different from our own.  Thus the talismanic words—­“Oh! don’t be shocked; remember you are in France,” did more to satisfy my young friend’s mind than all I could have said for an hour.  Little did she know that in England only, has an unmarried young lady any liberty, and that the standard of foreign propriety on this head is far, very far more rigid than our own.

“La premiere Rue a gauche,” said an old man of whom I inquired the road; “et puis,” added I.

“And then quite straight; it is a chaussee all the way, and you cannot mistake it.”

“Now for it, mademoiselle,” said I.  “Let us try if we cannot see a good deal of the country before the carriage comes up.”

We had soon left the town behind and reached a beautifully shaded high road, with blossoming fruit trees, and honeysuckle-covered cottages; there had been several light showers during the day, and the air had all the fresh fragrant feeling of an autumn evening, so tranquillizing and calming that few there are who have not felt at some time or other of their lives, its influence upon their minds.  I fancied my fair companion did so, for, as she walked beside me, her silence, and the gentle pressure of her arm, were far more eloquent than words.

If that extraordinary flutter and flurry of sensations which will now and then seize you, when walking upon a lonely country road with a pretty girl for your companion, whose arm is linked in yours, and whose thoughts, as far you can guess at least, are travelling the same path with your own—­if this be animal magnetism, or one of its phenomena, then do I swear by Mesmer, whatever it be, delusion or otherwise, it has given me the brightest moments of my life—­these are the real “winged dreams” of pleasures which outlive others of more absorbing and actual interest at the time.  After all, for how many of our happiest feelings are we indebted to the weakness of our nature.  The man that is wise at nineteen, “Je l’en fais mon compliment,” but I assuredly do not envy him; and now, even now, when I number more years than I should like to “confess,” rather than suffer the suspicious watchfulness of age to creep on me, I prefer to “go on believing,” even