es. I do not fancy
she meant to rouse the household; her notion probably was to terrorize
the princess, that she might compel her to quit my presence. In rushing
to the bell-rope, her impetuosity sent her stumbling on it with force,
and while threatening to ring, and meaning merely to threaten, she rang;
and as it was not a retractable act, she continued ringing, and the more
violently upon my father's appearance. Catching sight of Peterborough at
his heels, she screamed a word equivalent to a clergyman. She had lost
her discretion, but not her wits.

For any one save a lover--thwarted as I was, and perturbed by the shadow
falling on the princess--my father's Aplomb and promptness in conjuring a
check to what he assumed to be a premeditated piece of villany on the
part of Baroness Turckems, might have seemed tolerably worthy of
admiration. Me the whole scene affected as if it had burnt my skin. I
loathed that picture of him, constantly present to me, of his shivering
the glass of Ottilia's semi-classical night-lamp, gravely asking her
pardon, and stretching the flame to the curtain, with large eyes blazing
on the baroness. The stupid burlesque majesty of it was unendurable to
thought. Nevertheless, I had to thank him for shielding Ottilia, and I
had to brood on the fact that I had drawn her into a situation requiring
such a shield. He, meanwhile, according to his habit, was engaged in
reviewing the triumphs to come. 'We have won a princess!' And what
England would say, how England would look, when, on a further journey, I
brought my princess home, entirely occupied his imagination, to my
excessive torture--a state of mind for which it was impossible to ask his
mercy. His sole link with the past appeared to be this notion that he had
planned all the good things in store for us. Consequently I was condemned
to hear of the success of the plot, until--for I had not the best of
consciences--I felt my hand would be spell-bound in the attempt to write
to the princess; and with that sense of incapacity I seemed to be cut
loose from her, drifting back into the desolate days before I saw her
wheeled in her invalid chair along the sands and my life knew sunrise.

But whatever the mood of our affections, so it is with us island
wanderers: we cannot gaze over at England, knowing the old country to be
close under the sea-line, and not hail it, and partly forget ourselves in
the time that was. The smell of sea-air made me long for the