think only of the pleasure of meeting my father."

Mrs Wyllys, who never encouraged her pupil in those, natural weaknesses,
however pretty and be coming they might appear to other eyes, turned with
a steady mien to the young lady, as she remarked, with a brevity and
decision that were intended to put the question of fear at rest for
ever,--

"If all the dangers you appear to apprehend existed in reality, the
passage would not be made daily or even hourly, in safety. You have often,
Madam, come from the Carolinas by sea, in company with Admiral de Lacey?"

"Never," the widow promptly and a little drily remarked. "The water has
not agreed with my constitution, and I have never neglected to journey by
land. But then you know, Wyllys, as the consort and relict of a
flag-officer, it was not seemly that I should be ignorant of naval
science. I believe there are few ladies in the British empire who are more
familiar with ships, either singly or in squadron particularly the latter,
than myself. This in formation I have naturally acquired, as the companion
of an officer, whose fortune it was to lead fleets. I presume these are
matters of which you are profoundly ignorant."

The calm, dignified countenance of Wyllys, on which it would seem as if
long cherished and painful recollections had left a settled, but mild
expression of sorrow, that rather tempered than destroyed the traces of
character which were still remarkable in her firm collected eye, became
clouded, for a moment, with a deeper shade of melancholy. After
hesitating, as if willing to change the subject, she replied,--

"I have not been altogether a stranger to the sea. It has been my lot to
have made many long, and some perilous voyages."

"As a mere passenger. But we wives of sailors only, among our sex, can lay
claim to any real knowledge of the noble profession! What natural object
is there, or can there be," exclaimed the nautical dowager, in a burst of
professional enthusiasm, "finer than a stately ship breasting the billows,
as I have heard the Admiral say a thousand times, its taffrail ploughing
the main, and its cut-water gliding after, like a sinuous serpent pursuing
its shining wake, as a living creature choosing its path on the land, and
leaving the bone under its fore-foot, a beacon for those that follow? I
know not, my dear Wyllys, if I make myself intelligible to you, but, to my
instructed eye, this charming description conveys a picture of all that