commit all sorts of errors, and perhaps to meet with all sorts
of accidents; while I, an idle man, with my time entirely at my own
disposal, was stopping at Naples, and leaving him to his fate after
I had suggested the plan of his expedition, and had encouraged him to
confide in me. In this way I kept turning the subject over and over
again in my mind, being quite free, let me add, from looking at it
in any other than a practical point of view. I firmly believed, as
a derider of all ghost stories, that Alfred was deceiving himself in
fancying that he had seen the apparition of his uncle before the news
of Mr. Monkton's death reached England, and I was on this account,
therefore, uninfluenced by the slightest infection of my unhappy
friend's delusions when I at last fairly decided to accompany him in his
extraordinary search. Possibly my harum-scarum fondness for excitement
at that time biased me a little in forming my resolution; but I must
add, in common justice to myself, that I also acted from motives of real
sympathy for Monkton, and from a sincere wish to allay, if I could, the
anxiety of the poor girl who was still so faithfully waiting and hoping
for him far away in England.

Certain arrangements preliminary to our departure, which I found myself
obliged to make after a second interview with Alfred, betrayed
the object of our journey to most of our Neapolitan friends. The
astonishment of everybody was of course unbounded, and the nearly
universal suspicion that I must be as mad in my way as Monkton himself
showed itself pretty plainly in my presence. Some people actually
tried to combat my resolution by telling me what a shameless profligate
Stephen Monkton had been--as if I had a strong personal interest in
hunting out his remains! Ridicule moved me as little as any arguments of
this sort; my mind was made up, and I was as obstinate then as I am now.

In two days' time I had got everything ready, and had ordered the
traveling carriage to the door some hours earlier than we had originally
settled. We were jovially threatened with "a parting cheer" by all our
English acquaintances, and I thought it desirable to avoid this on
my friend's account; for he had been more excited, as it was, by the
preparations for the journey than I at all liked. Accordingly, soon
after sunrise, without a soul in the street to stare at us, we privately
left Naples.

Nobody will wonder, I think, that I experienced some difficulty in