to-morrow
morning--to-night if you like----'

'Drive after her? Last night, when it would have availed, thou wouldest
not drive after her. Now, if we follow her, we must swim. She has gone
to an island--an island, I tell thee, of which I never till this day
heard--an island to reach which requires much wind from a favourable
quarter--which without wind is not to be reached at all--and in me thou
now beholdest a broken-hearted man.'

THE TENTH DAY

FROM WIEK TO HIDDENSEE

The island to which Charlotte had retired was the island of Hiddensee, a
narrow strip of sand to the west of Ruegen. Generally so wordy, the
guide-book merely mentions it as a place to which it is possible for
Ruegen tourists to make excursions, and proffers with a certain timidity
the information that pleasure may be had there in observing the life and
habits of sea-birds.

To this place of sea-birds Charlotte had gone, as she wrote in a letter
left with the landlady for me, because during the night she spent at
Wiek a panic had seized her lest the Harvey-Brownes should by some
chance appear there in their wanderings before I did. 'I daresay they
will not dream of coming round this way at all,' she continued, 'but you
never know.'

You certainly never know, I agreed, Mrs. Harvey-Browne being at that
very moment in the room Charlotte had had the panic in; and I lay awake
elaborating a most beautiful plan by which I intended at one stroke to
reunite Charlotte and her husband and free myself of both of them.

This plan came into my head during the evening while sitting sadly
listening to something extremely like a scolding from the Professor. It
seemed to me that I had done all in my power short of inhumanity to the
horses to help him, and it was surely not my fault that Charlotte had
not happened to stay anywhere long enough for us to catch her up. My
intentions were so good. Far preferring to drive alone and stop where
and when I pleased--at Vitt for instance, among the walnut trees--I had
yet given up all my preferences so that I might help bring man and wife
together. If anything, did not this conduct incline towards the noble?

'Your extreme simplicity amazes me,' remarked the wise relative when,
arrived at this part of my story on my return home, I plaintively asked
the above question. 'Under no circumstances is the meddler ever
thanked.'

'Meddler? Helper, you mean. Apparently you would call every person who
helps a meddler.'