how I feel, Herbert. But I know how I ought to
feel."

"Wait a little. You will regain your courage. You will find nothing
wrong in all this presently. It was bound to happen. There was not
the least occasion for this business of rope ladders and midnight
sailings. It is Lady Amelia who forces this elopement upon us."

"What will she say?" she breathed through her fingers, still keeping
her face hidden to conceal the crimson that had flushed her on a sudden
and that was showing to the rim of her collar.

"Do you care? Do _I_ care? We have forced her hand, and what can she
do? If you were but twenty-one, Grace!--and yet I don't know. You
would be three years older--three years of sweetness gone for ever!
But the old lady will have to give her consent now, and the rest will
be for my cousin Frank to manage. Pray look at me, my sweet one."

"I can't. I am ashamed. It is a most desperate act. What will
mam'selle say--and your sailors?" she murmured from behind her hands.

"My sailors! Grace, shall I take you back whilst there is yet time?"

She flashed a look at me over her finger tips.

"Certainly not!" she exclaimed with emphasis, then hid her face again.

I seated myself by her side, but it took me five minutes to get her to
look at me, and another five minutes to coax a smile from her. In this
while the men were busy about the decks. I heard Caudel's growling
lungs of leather delivering orders in a half-stifled hurricane note,
but I did not know that we were under way until I put my head through
the companion hatch, and saw the dusky fabrics of the piers on either
side stealing almost insensibly past us. Now that the wide expanse of
sky had opened over the land, I could witness a dimness, as of the
shadowing of clouds, in the quarter of the sky against which stood the
unfinished block of the cathedral. This caused me to reckon upon the
wind freshening presently. As it now blew it was a very light air
indeed, scarce with weight enough to steady the light cloths of the
yacht. There was an unwieldy lump of a French smack slowly grinding
her way up the harbour close in against the pier on the port side, and
astern of us were the triangular lights of a paddle-wheeled steamer,
bound to London, timed for the tide that was now high, and filling the
quietude of the night with the noise of the swift beats of revolving
wheels.

"Mind that steamer!" I called out to Caudel, who was at the helm.

She