her luggage behind her, and found herself at Graide station, province of Luxemburg. Lettice was an expert in the art of traveling cheaply. She had left Victoria the previous afternoon, in a slow train, because the boat expresses don't take third-class passengers. After a wait at Dover, she had crossed by night in the fetid atmosphere of the second-class ladies' cabin of the old _Rapide_, and had been excessively ill. Continuing her journey at 4 A.M., she had traveled to Brussels in a smoking compartment with all the windows shut. Namur, Dinant, Houyet--she lost count of her changes after that. Sometimes she faced the engine; more often she had to ride back; once a Belgian _père de famille_ marched across the width of the carriage and ruthlessly pulled up the window, her window, under her very nose. Always somebody was smoking, to the usual accompaniments, under the notice "Niet Rooken"; and always, at every change, she had to drag her heavy basket down steps and across lines of rail and heave it up to racks far above her aching head. We buy our pleasures dear when we are young. But this was the end. At Graide she was to meet the diligence which should land her at the doors of the Hôtel Bellevue. Of course there was no porter. In those days there never were any porters at a Belgian country station. If you didn't _expédier_ your baggage (as every self-respecting traveler should), you had to carry it yourself. Lettice's baggage was what is known as a pilgrim basket, gone at the corners, with a double strap which had slipped into a string round its middle, leaving the ends bulging. Bending to it like a patient donkey, she trailed across the loose gray gravel to the exit, and at last was outside in the road. The Café de la Gare confronted her, a yellow house with red facings and a blue slate roof. "Bureau de la diligence" appeared on its sign, but the customary shabby, dirty, stuffy, rickety ruin of a two-horse shandrydan was nowhere to be seen. "Pour Rochehaut, madame?" A smart commissionaire had seized her basket. Round his cap in gilt lettering ran the words, "Hôtel Bellevue." Lettice nodded distrustfully, and in a trice was whisked round the corner, still clinging to her strap. Behold the diligence of the Hôtel Bellevue--a brand-new motor char-à-banc, glistening in tan-colored varnish! The commissionaire threw open the door with a flourish worthy of the boulevards, and Lettice subsided in a corner as if her patient knees had at last given way. In the fresh air she presently revived enough to take notice of her fellow-travelers. There were two, both women, the elder obviously a maid. Lettice had seen them before, at Dinant, descending from a _voiture-salon_ with a porter in attendance, and had marked them with a malevolent eye, having tried in vain to 

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