GOVERNESS'S ROOM," "FOUR GIRLS SLEEP
HERE,"--with other hints of a like kind.

I carefully read the letter. Suppose the ladder which Caudel had wound
around his broad breast should prove too short? No! the height from
the balcony to the ground was exactly ten feet. She had measured it
herself, and that there might be no error, had enclosed me the length
of pack-thread with which--with a little weight at the end of it--she
had plumbed the trifling distance. She hoped it would be a fine night.
If there should be thunder I must not come. She would rather die than
leave the house in a thunderstorm. Neither must I come if the sea was
rough. She was acting very wrongly--why did she love me so?--why was I
so impatient? Could I not wait until she was twenty-one? Then she
would be of age and her own mistress: three years and a month or two
would soon pass, and, meanwhile, our love for each other would be
growing deeper and deeper--at least _hers_ would. She could not answer
for mine. She was content to have faith.

All this was very much underlined, and here and there was a little
smudge as though she had dropped a tear.

But she had plucked up as she drew towards the close of her letter,
and, mere child as she was, there was a quality of decision in her
final sentence which satisfied me that she would not fail me when the
moment came. I put the letter in my pocket and went on deck.

"Where are you, Caudel?"

"Here, sir," cried a shadow in the starboard gangway.

"Let us start," said I; "there is half-an-hour's walk before us, and
though the agreed time is one, there is a great deal to be done when we
arrive."

"I've been a-thinking, Mr. Barclay," he exclaimed, "that the young
lady'll never be able to get aboard this yacht by that there up and
down ladder," meaning the perpendicular steps affixed to the harbour
wall.

"No!" cried I, needlessly startled by an insignificant oversight on the
very threshold of the project.

"The boat," he continued, "had better be in waiting at them stairs,
just past the smack, astarn of us there."

"Give the necessary orders," said I.

He did so swiftly, bidding two of the men to be at the stairs by one
o'clock, the others to have the port gangway unshipped that we might
step aboard in a moment, along with sails loosed and gear all seen to,
ready for a prompt start. We then ascended the ladder and gained the
top of the quay.

A _douanier_ stood at a little distance. As