hospitable
African shore where he was now enduring such tragic misfortunes, he
perceived the majestic form of his loved one--his loved one whom he
believed to be in Belgrave Square--coming towards him to soothe, to
comfort, to direct. She brushed away a tear.

"Go, Mrs. Forbes," she said.

And Mrs. Forbes retired, smiling.

An epic might well be written on the great novelist's journey to Africa,
upon her departure from Charing Cross, shrouded in a black gauze veil,
her silent thought as the good ship _Empress_ rode cork-like upon the
Channel waves, her ascetic lunch--a captain's biscuit and a glass of
water--at the buffet at Calais, her arrival in Paris when the shades
of night had fallen. An epic might well be written. Perhaps some day it
will be, by herself.

In Paris she suffered a good deal on account of Mrs. Forbes, who, in her
fear of "ab-sint," became hysterical, and caused not a little annoyance
by accusing various inoffensive French travellers of nefarious designs
upon her property and person. In the Gulf of Lyons she suffered even
more, and as, unluckily, the wind was contrary and the sea prodigious
during the whole of the passage across the Mediterranean, both she and
Mrs. Forbes arrived at Algiers four hours late, in a condition which may
be more easily imagined than properly described.

Genius in thrall to the body, and absolutely dependent upon green
chartreuse for its flickering existence, is no subject for even a
sympathetic pen. Sufficient to say that, when the ship came in under the
lights of Algiers, the crowd of shouting Arabs was struck to silence by
the spectacle of Mrs. Greyne and Mrs. Forbes endeavouring to disembark,
in bonnets that were placed seaward upon the head instead of landward,
unbuttoned boots, and gowns soaked with the attentions of the waves.

After being gently and permanently relieved of their light hand-baggage,
the mistress and maid, who seemed greatly overwhelmed by the sight
of Africa, and who moved--or rather were carried--as in a dream, were
placed reverently in the nearest omnibus, and conveyed to the farthest
hotel, which was situated upon a lofty hill above the town. Here a
slightly painful scene took place.

Having been assisted by the staff into a Moorish hall, Mrs. Greyne
inquired in a reticent voice for her husband, and was politely informed
that there was no person of the name of Greyne in the hotel. For a
moment she seemed threatened with dissolution, but wit