the cabin and called to the steward, who brought
the wine, and for hard upon half an hour my poor darling and I had to
listen to speeches from old Parsons and the lawyer. Even M'Cosh must
talk. In slow and rugged accents he invited us to consider how
fortunate we were in having fallen into the hands of Captain Parsons.
Had _he_ been master of the _Carthusian_ there could have been no
marriage, for he would not have known what to do. He had received a
valuable professional hint that morning, and he begged to thank Captain
Parsons for allowing him to be present on so interesting an occasion.

This said, the proceedings ended. Mrs. Barstow, passing Grace's hand
under her arm, carried her off to her cabin, and I, accepting a cigar
from the captain's box, went on deck to smoke it and to see if there
was anything in sight likely to carry us home.

A number of passengers approached with smiling faces, guessing the
wedding over, but they speedily perceived that I was in no temper for
talking, and were good-natured enough to leave me to myself. Even Mr.
Tooth, who promised to become a bore, carried his jokes and his grins
to another part of the deck in a very short while, and I leaned against
the rail, cigar in mouth, lost in thought, casting looks at the sea, or
directing my eyes over the side where the white water, in a wide and
throbbing sheet, was racing past.

Married! Could I believe it? If so--if I was indeed a wedded man,
then, I suppose, never in the annals of love-making could anything
stranger have happened than that a young couple, eloping from a French
port, should be blown out into the ocean and there united, not by a
priest, by but a merchant skipper. And supposing the marriage to be
valid, as Mr. Higginson, after due deliberation, had declared such
ocean wedding ceremonies as this to be, and supposing when we arrived
ashore, Lady Amelia Roscoe, despite Grace's and my association and the
ceremony which had just ended, should continue to withhold her
sanction, thereby rendering it impossible for my cousin to marry us,
might not an exceedingly fine point arise--something to put the wits of
the lawyers to their trumps, in the case of her ladyship or me going to
them? I mean this: that seeing that our marriage took place at sea,
seeing, moreover, that we were in a manner urged, or, as I might choose
to put it, _compelled_ by Captain Parsons to marry--he assuming, as
master of the ship, the position of guar