Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/73

Rh the want of these innocent recreations that drove us to so dark a deed!

I have already said that we were taken to Boulogne for masters and economy. Our house in the Haute Ville was next to the Convent, and close to the future rising—slowly rising—Notre Dame. My sister Blanche and I gradually made up our minds to this life, our European Botany Bay. We were not allowed to walk alone, except upon the Ramparts, which, however, make a good mile under large shady trees, with views from every side—not a bad walk by any means. Mother, my sister Blanche, and I used to walk once daily up the lounge, which in fine weather was down the Grande Rue, the Rue de l'Ecu, the Quai to the end of the pier and back; but in winter our promenade may be said to be confined to the Grande Rue. There we could observe the notorieties and eccentricities of the place. There might be a dozen or more handsome young men of good family, generally with something shady about money hanging over them, a great many pretty, fast girls and young married women, a great deal of open flirtation, much attention to dress, and plenty of old half-pay officers with large families, who had come to Boulogne for the same reasons as ourselves. If there were any good families, they lived in the Haute Ville, and were English; there were, in fact, half a dozen aristocratic English families, who stuck together and would speak to nobody else. I have learnt since that often in a place one dislikes there will arise some circumstance that will prove the pivot on which part, or the whole, of one's life may turn, and that