fect vessel was the Basilisk, and such an
admirable sailor was Mrs. Coningsby, which, considering that the river
was like a mill-pond, according to Tancred's captain, or like a mirror,
according to Lady Bertie and Bellair, was not surprising. The duke
protested that he was quite glad that Mon-tacute had taken to yachting,
it seemed to agree with him so well; and spoke of his son's future
movements as if there were no such place as Palestine in the world. The
sanguine duchess dreamed of Cowes regattas, and resolved to agree to
any arrangement to meet her son's fancy, provided he would stay at home,
which she convinced herself he had now resolved to do.

'Our cousin is so wise,' she said to her husband, as they were
returning. 'What could the bishop mean by saying that Tancred was a
visionary? I agree with you, George, there is no counsellor like a man
of the world.'

'I wish M. de Sidonia had come,' said Lady Bertie and Bellair, gazing
from the window of the Trafalgar on the moonlit river with an expression
of abstraction, and speaking in a tone almost of melancholy.

'I also wish it, since you do,' said Tancred. 'But they say he goes
nowhere. It was almost presumptuous in me to ask him, yet I did so
because you wished it.'

'I never shall know him,' said Lady Bertie and Bellair, with some
vexation.

'He interests you,' said Tancred, a little piqued.

'I had so many things to say to him,' said her ladyship.

'Indeed!' said Tancred; and then he continued, 'I offered him every
inducement to come, for I told him it was to meet you; but perhaps if
he had known that you had so many things to say to him, he might have
relented.'

'So many things! Oh! yes. You know he has been a great traveller; he has
been everywhere; he has been at Jerusalem.'

'Fortunate man!' exclaimed Tancred, half to himself. 'Would I were
there!'

'Would we were there, you mean,' said Lady Bertie, in a tone of
exquisite melody, and looking at Tancred with her rich, charged eyes.

His heart trembled; he was about to give utterance to some wild words,
but they died upon his lips. Two great convictions shared his being:
the absolute necessity of at once commencing his pilgrimage, and the
persuasion that life, without the constant presence of this sympathising
companion, must be intolerable. What was to be done? In his long
reveries, where he had brooded over so many thoughts, some only of which
he had as yet expressed to mortal ear, Tancred ha