forgive me; and
when I get out of my present deep distress I hope you will come and see
us and be like old friends.--Yours sincerely, MADGE HANBURY.'

At this present moment Captain King, as they still call him (for all
these things happened not so long ago), considers this letter the most
valuable he ever received. Not any message from home announcing to the
schoolboy that a hamper would speedily arrive; not any communication
from the Admiralty after he had arrived at man's estate; nay, not any
one of Nan's numerous love-letters--witty, and tender, and clever, as
these were--had for him anything like the gigantic importance of this
letter. It is needless to say that, very shortly after the receipt of
it, and without saying a word to anybody, he slipped down to Brighton,
and got a room at the Norfolk.

It was so strange to think that Nan was a little way along there; and
that there was still a chance that that same Nan--the wonder of the
world with whose going away from him the world had got quite altered
somehow--might still be his! It bewildered him as yet. To think of
Nan at Kingscourt!--her presence filling the house with sunlight;
charming everybody with her quiet, humorous ways, and her
self-possession, and her sweetness, and the faithfulness of her frank,
clear eyes! And all his thinking came back to the one point. This was
now Nan herself he had a chance of winning; not any imaginary Nan; not
any substitute; not any vision to be wavering this way and that; but
the very Nan herself. And if it was true--if the real Nan, after all,
was to go hand-in-hand through life with him--where, of all the places
in the world, should they first go to together? To that far-away inn
at Splugen, surely! Now it would be his own Nan who would sit at the
small table, and laugh with her shining, clear eyes. She would walk
with him up the steep Pass; the sunlight on her pink cheeks; he would
hear the chirp of her boots on the wet snow.

Amid all this wild whirl of hope and doubt and delightful assurance, it
was hard to have to wait for an opportunity of speaking to Nan alone.
He would not go to the house, lest there should be visitors, or some
one staying there; he would rather catch Nan on one of her pilgrimages
in the country or along the downs, with solitude and silence to aid him
in his prayer. But that chance seemed far off. He watched for Nan
incessantly; and his sharp sailor's eyes followed her keenly, while he