short, I made my
sweetheart forget to feel uneasy. She talked, she sipped her tea, she
ate, and then she looked better, and indeed owned that she felt so.

CHAPTER IV

SWEETHEARTS IN A DANDY

For my part I breakfasted with the avidity of a shipwrecked man.
Ashore it might have been otherwise, but the sea breeze is a noble
neutraliser of whatever is undesirable in the obligations which attend
an excess of sentiment and emotion.

The cabin made as pretty a little marine piece as ever the light of the
early sun flashed into. There were flowers of fragrance and of rich
colours; the small table sparkled with its hospitable furniture; the
polished bulkheads rippled with light, and the diamond-like glance of
the lustrous, dancing sea seemed to be swept by the blue air gushing
athwart the sky-light into the mirrors, which enriched this little
boudoir of a cabin. But it was the presence of Grace which informed
this picture with those qualities of sweetness, elegance, refinement,
perfume, which I now found in it, but had not before noticed. How
proudly my young heart rose to the sight of her! to the thought of her
as my own, one and indivisible, no longer the distant hope, which for
weary months past her aunt had made her to me, but my near
sweetheart--my present darling--her hand within reach of my grasp.

We sat together in earnest conversation. It was not for me to pretend
that I could witness no imprudence in our elopement. Indeed, I took
care to let her know that I regretted the step we had been forced into
taking as fully as she did. My love was an influence upon her, and
whatever I said I felt might weigh with her childish heart. But I
repeated what I had again and again written to her--that there had been
no other alternative than this elopement.

"You wished me to wait," I said, "until you were twenty-one, when you
would be your own mistress. But to wait for more than three years!
What was to happen in that time? They might have converted you--"

"No," she cried.

"And have wrought a complete change in your nature," I went on. "How
many girls are there who could resist the sort of pressure they were
subjecting you to one way and another?"

"They could not have changed my heart, Herbert."

"How can we tell? Under their influence in another year you might have
come to congratulate yourself upon your escape from me."

"Do you think so? Then you should have granted me another year,
because ma