- Kaiser William II. Brand saw also, with an instant
thrill of remembrance, two large steel engravings from Winterhalter's portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He had seen them, as a child, in his grandfather's house at Kew, and in the houses of school-fellows' grandfathers, who cherished these representations of Victoria and Albert with almost religious loyalty. The large square of Turkey carpet on polished boards, a mahogany sideboard, and some stiff big arm-chairs of clumsily-carved oak, were reminiscent of German furniture and taste in the period of the mid-nineteenth century, when ours was equally atrocious. The later period had obtruded itself into that background. There was a piano in white wood at one end of the room, and here and there light chairs in the "New Art" style of Germany, with thin legs and straight uncomfortable backs. The most pleasing things in the room were some porcelain figures of Saxon and Hanover ware, little German ladies with pleated gowns and low-necked bodices, and, on the walls, a number of water-colour drawings, mostly of English scenes, delicately done, with vision and a nice sense of atmosphere.
"The younger generation thrusting out the old," thought Brand, "and the spirit of both of them destroyed by what has happened in five years."
The door opened, he told me, when he had taken stock of his surroundings, and there came in two women, one middle-aged, the other young. He guessed that he was in the presence of Frau von Kreuzenach and her daughter, and made his bow, with an apology for intruding upon them. He hoped that they would not be in the least degree disturbed by his billeting-order. He would need only a bedroom and his breakfast.
The Baroness was courteous but rather cold in her dignity. She was a handsome woman of about forty-
