ing us in these
times, upon an appreciation of which this history depends, one turns at
whiles a languishing glance toward the vast potential mood, pluperfect
tense. For Nevil Beauchamp was on board the cutter, steering her, with
Dr. Shrapnel and Lydiard in the well, and if an accident had happened to
cutter or schooner, what else might not have happened? Cecilia gathered
it from Mrs. Wardour-Devereux, whom, to her surprise and pleasure, she
found at Romfrey Castle. Her friend Louise received a letter from Mr.
Lydiard, containing a literary amateur seaman's log of a cruise of a
fifteen-ton cutter in a gale, and a pure literary sketch of Beauchamp
standing drenched at the helm from five in the morning up to nine at
night, munching a biscuit for nourishment. The beautiful widow prepared
the way for what was very soon to be publicly known concerning herself by
reading out this passage of her correspondent's letter in the breakfast
room.

'Yes, the fellow's a sailor!' said Lord Romfrey.

The countess rose from her chair and walked out.

'Now, was that abuse of the fellow?' the old lord asked Colonel Halkett.
'I said he was a sailor, I said nothing else. He is a sailor, and he's
fit for nothing else, and no ship will he get unless he bends his neck
never 's nearer it.'

He hesitated a moment, and went after his wife.

Cecilia sat with the countess, in the afternoon, at a window overlooking
the swelling woods of Romfrey. She praised the loveliness of the view.

'It is fire to me,' said Rosamund.

Cecilia looked at her, startled. Rosamund said no more.

She was an excellent hostess, nevertheless, unpretending and simple in
company; and only when it chanced that Beauchamp's name was mentioned did
she cast that quick supplicating nervous glance at the earl, with a
shadow of an elevation of her shoulders, as if in apprehension of mordant
pain.

We will make no mystery about it. I would I could. Those happy tales of
mystery are as much my envy as the popular narratives of the deeds of
bread and cheese people, for they both create a tide-way in the attentive
mind; the mysterious pricking our credulous flesh to creep, the familiar
urging our obese imagination to constitutional exercise. And oh, the
refreshment there is in dealing with characters either contemptibly
beneath us or supernaturally above! My way is like a Rhone island in the
summer drought, stony, unattractive and difficult between the two
forceful streams of