at our destination
in three days, and then--and then--" said I, sitting down and bringing
her to me.

She laid her cheek on my shoulder but said nothing.

"Now," I exclaimed, "you are of course faint and wretched for the want
of refreshments. What can I get you?" and I was about to give her a
list of the wines and eatables I had laid in, but she languidly shook
her head, as it rested on my shoulder, and faintly bade me not to speak
of refreshments.

"I should like to lie down," she said.

"You are tired--worn out," I exclaimed, not yet seeing how it was with
her; "yonder is your cabin. I believe you will find all you want in
it. Unhappily we have no maid aboard to help you. But you will be
able to manage, Grace--it is but for a day or two; and if you are not
perfectly happy and comfortable, why, we will make for the nearest
English port and finish the rest of the journey by rail. But our
little yacht--"

"I must lie down," she interrupted; "this dreadful motion!--get me a
pillow and a rug; I will lie on this sofa."

I could have heaped a hundred injurious names upon my head for not at
once observing that the darling was suffering. I sprang from her side,
hastily procured a pillow and rug, removed her hat, plunged afresh into
her cabin for some Eau de Cologne and went to work to bathe her brow
and to minister to her in other ways. To be afflicted with nausea in
the most romantic passage of one's life! I had never thought of
inquiring whether or not she was a "good sailor," as it is called,
being much too sentimental, much, too much in love to be visited by
misgivings or conjectures in a direction so horribly prosaic as this.

I thought to comfort her by saying that if her sufferings continued we
would head direct for Dover or some adjacent harbour. But, somehow, my
scheme of elopement having comprised a yachting trip, the programme of
it had grown into a habit of thought with me. For weeks I had been
looking forward to the trip with the impassioned eagerness of a lover,
delighting my mind with the fancy of having my sweetheart all to myself
in a sense that no excursion on shore could possibly parallel. On
shore there would be the rude conditions of the railway, the cab, the
hotel, and all the vulgarity of dispatch when in motion. But the yacht
gave my heart's trick of idealising a chance. The quiet surface of
sea--I was too much in love to think of a gale of wind; the glories of
the sunset; the new