moon; the hushed night; we two on deck; our
impassioned whispers set to music by the brook-like murmurings of
waters alongside; the silken fannings of phantom-like pinions of
canvas; the subdued voices of the men forward... Yes! It was of these
things I had thought; these were the engaging, the delightful fancies
that had filled my brain.

Nor, in this candid narrative which, I trust, will carry its own
apology for our audacious behaviour as it progresses, must I omit to
give the chief reason for my choice of a yacht as a means of eloping
with Grace. She was under twenty-one; her aunt, Lady Amelia Roscoe,
was her guardian, and no clergyman would marry the girl to me without
her aunt's consent. That consent must be wrested from the old lady,
and the business of wresting manifestly implies a violent measure; and
what then, as I somewhat boyishly concluded, could follow our lonely
association at sea for three or four days, or perhaps a week, but her
ladyship's sanction?

A man, in describing his own passion, and in depicturing himself making
love, cannot but present a foolish figure. Unhappily, this story
solely concerns my elopement with Grace Bellassys and what came of it,
and, therefore, it is in the strictest sense a tale of love: a
description of which sentiment, however, as it worked in me and my
dearest girl, I will endeavour to trouble you as little as possible
with.

CHAPTER III

AT SEA

It was some time after three o'clock in the morning when Grace fell
asleep. The heave of the vessel had entirely conquered emotion. She
had had no smiles for me; the handkerchief she held to her mouth had
kept her lips sealed; but her eyes were never more beautiful than now
with their languishing expression of suffering, and I could not remove
my gaze from her face, so exceedingly sweet did she look as she lay
with the rich bronze of her hair glittering, as though gold-dusted, to
the lamplight, and her brow showing with an ivory gleam through the
tresses which shadowed it in charming disorder.

She fell asleep at last, breathing quietly, and I cannot tell how it
comforted me to find her able to sleep, for now I might hope it would
not take many hours of rest to qualify her as a sailor. In all this
time that I had been below refreshing her brow and attending to her,
and watching her as a picture of which my sight could never weary, the
breeze had freshened and the yacht was heeling to it, and taking the
wrin