,_ she
called again on Messrs. White, and took her passage in the _Proserpine._
The essential thing to her mind was to sail when she had promised, and to
go in a ship that belonged to her lover.

The _Proserpine_ was to sail in ten days.

Seaton inquired into the state of the _Proserpine._ She was a good, sound
vessel, and there was no excuse for detaining her.

Then he wrestled long and hard with the selfish part of his great love.
Instead of turning sullen, he set himself to carry out Helen Rolleston's
will. He went on board the _Proserpine_ and chose her the best stern
cabin.

General Rolleston had ordered Helen's cabin to be furnished, and the
agent had put in the usual things, such as a standing bedstead with
drawers beneath, chest of drawers, small table, two chairs, washstand,
looking-glass, and swinging lamp.

But Seaton made several visits to the ship, and effected the following
arrangements at his own cost. He provided a neat cocoa-mat for her cabin
deck, for comfort and foot-hold. He unshipped the regular six-paned stern
windows, and put in single-pane plate glass; he fitted venetian blinds,
and hung two little rose-colored curtains to each of the windows; all so
arranged as to be easily removed in case it should be necessary to ship
dead-lights in heavy weather. He glazed the door leading to her bath-room
and quarter gallery with plate glass; he provided a light easy-chair,
slung and fitted with grommets, to be hung on hooks screwed into the
beams in the midship of the cabin. On this Helen could sit and read, and
so become insensible to the motion of the ship. He fitted a small
bookcase, with a button, which could be raised when a book might be
wanted; he fixed a strike-bell in her maid's cabin communicating with two
strikers in Helen's cabin; he selected books, taking care that the
voyages and travels were prosperous ones. No "Seaman's Recorder,"
"Life-boat Journal," or "Shipwrecks and Disasters in the British Navy."

Her cabin was the after-cabin on the starboard side, was entered through
the cuddy, had a door communicating with the quarter gallery, two stern
windows and a dead-eye on deck. The maid's cabin was the port
after-cabin; doors opened into cuddy and quarter-gallery. And a fine
trouble Miss Rolleston had to get a maid to accompany her; but at last a
young woman offered to go with her for high wages, demurely suppressing
the fact that she had just married one of the sailors, and would have