eginning to discover
that girls do not always get married out of the way in their first
bloom. And now he was taking to himself another girl! He must, he
knew, give over all hope of escape in that direction. He was very
uneasy; and when quite late at night,--or rather, early in the
morning,--he took himself to bed, his slumbers were not refreshing.
The truth was that no air suited him for sleeping except the air of
Southampton Buildings.

The packet from St. Thomas was to be in the harbour at eight o'clock
the next morning,--telegrams from Cape Clear, The Lizard, Eddystone
Lighthouse, and where not, having made all that as certain as
sun-rising. At eight o'clock he was down on the quay, and there was
the travelling city of the Royal Atlantic Steam Mail Packet Company
at that moment being warped into the harbour. The ship as he walked
along the jetty was so near to him that he could plainly see the
faces of the passengers on deck,--men and women, girls and children,
all dressed up to meet their friends on shore, crowding the sides of
the vessel in their eagerness to be among the first to get on shore.
He anxiously scanned the faces of the ladies that he might guess
which was to be the lady that was to be to him almost the same as a
daughter. He saw not one as to whom he could say that he had a hope.
Some there were in the crowd, some three or four, as to whom he
acknowledged that he had a fear. At last he remembered that his girl
would necessarily be in deep mourning. He saw two young women in
black;--but there was nothing to prepossess him about either of them.
One of them was insignificant and very plain. The other was fat and
untidy. They neither of them looked like ladies. What if fate should
have sent to him as a daughter,--as a companion for his girls,--that
fat, untidy, ill-bred looking young woman! As it happened, the
ill-bred looking young woman whom he feared, was a cook who had
married a ship-steward, had gone out among the islands with her
husband, had found that the speculation did not answer, and was now
returning in the hope of earning her bread in her old vocation. Of
this woman Sir Thomas Underwood was in great dread.

But at last he was on board, and whispered his question to the
purser. Miss Bonner! Oh, yes; Miss Bonner was on board. Was he Sir
Thomas Underwood, Miss Bonner's uncle? The purser evidently knew all
about it, and there was something in his tone which seemed to assure
Sir Thomas that the