The Project Gutenberg EBook of Miss or Mrs.?, by Wilkie Collins

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Title: Miss or Mrs.?

Author: Wilkie Collins

Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #1621]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISS OR MRS.? ***

Produced by James Rusk and David Widger

MISS OR MRS.?

by Wilkie Collins

PERSONS OF THE STORY.

Sir Joseph Graybrooke. . . . . . . . . .(Knight)
Richard Turlington . . . . (Of the Levant Trade)
Launcelot Linzie . .(Of the College of Surgeons)
James Dicas. . . . . .(Of the Roll of Attorneys)
Thomas Wildfang. . . . . .(Superannuated Seaman)
Miss Graybrooke. . . . . . (Sir Joseph's Sister)
Natalie. . . . . . . . . (Sir Joseph's Daughter)
Lady Winwood . . . . . . . .(Sir Joseph's Niece)
Amelia} Sophia}. (Lady Winwood's Stepdaughter's)
and Dorothea}

Period: THE PRESENT TIME. Place: ENGLAND.

FIRST SCENE

At Sea.

The night had come to an end. The new-born day waited for its quickening
light in the silence that is never known on land--the silence before
sunrise, in a calm at sea.

Not a breath came from the dead air. Not a ripple stirred on the
motionless water. Nothing changed but the softly-growing light; nothing
moved but the lazy mist, curling up to meet the sun, its master, on the
eastward sea. By fine gradations, the airy veil of morning thinned in
substance as it rose--thinned, till there dawned through it in the first
rays of sunlight the tall white sails of a Schooner Yacht.

From stem to stern silence possessed the vessel--as silence possessed
the sea.

But one living creature was on deck--the man at the helm, dozing
peaceably with his arm over the useless tiller. Minute by minute the
light grew, and the heat grew with it; and still the helmsman slumbered,
the heavy sails hung noiseless, the quiet water lay sleeping against
the vessel's sides. The whole orb of the sun was visible above the
water-line, when the first sound pierced its way through the morning
silence. From far off over the shining white ocean, the cry of a
sea-bird reached the yacht on a sudden out of the last airy circles of
the wan