r. Reynolds, will you take this
young lady to her servant, Ursule, the woman you rescued?"

And Mademoiselle Le Blanc disappeared under that gentleman's escort.

The ordinary restraints of social life not obtaining so much on board
ship as elsewhere, Mr. Raleigh saw his acquaintance with the pale young
stranger fast ripening into friendliness. It was an agreeable variation
from the monotonous routine of his voyage, and he felt that it was not
unpleasant to her. Indeed, with that childlike simplicity that was her
first characteristic, she never saw him without seeking him, and every
morning and every evening it became their habit to pace the deck
together. Sunrise and twilight began to be the hours with which he
associated her; and it was strange, that, coming, as she did, out of the
full blaze of tropical suns, she yet seemed a creature that had taken
life from the fresh, cool, dewy hours, and that must fairly dissolve
beneath the sky of noon. She puzzled him, too, and he found singular
contradictions in her: to-night, sweetness itself,--to-morrow, petulant
as a spoiled child. She had all a child's curiosity, too; and he amused
himself by seeing, at one time, with what novelty his adventures struck
her, when, at another, he would have fancied she had always held Taj and
Himmaleh in her garden. Now and then, excited, perhaps, by emulation and
wonder, her natural joyousness broke through the usually sad and quiet
demeanor; and she related to him, with dramatic _abandon_, scenes of her
gay and innocent island-life, so that he fancied there was not an
emotion in her experience hidden from his knowledge, till, all-unaware,
he tripped over one reserve and another, that made her, for the moment,
as mysterious a being as any of those court-ladies of ancient _regimes_,
in whose lives there were strange _lacunae_, and spaces of shadow. And a
peculiarity of their intercourse was, that, let her depart in what freak
or perversity she pleased, she seemed always to have a certainty of
finding him in the same mood in which she had left him,--as some bright
wayward vine of Southern forests puts out a tendril to this or that
enticing point, yet, winding back, will find its first support
unchanged. Shut out, as Mr. Raleigh had been, from any but the most
casual female society, he found a great charm in this familiarity, and,
without thinking how lately it had begun or how soon it must cease, he
yielded himself to its presence. At one hour