hasten as swiftly as the wind will allow us to the parish where the
ceremony is to be performed, for my cousin can't publish the banns
until we are on the spot, and whilst he is publishing the banns we must
be treating with her ladyship, and, as the diplomatists would say,
negotiating a successful issue."

She sighed, and looked grave, and hung her head. In truth, she took a
gloomy view of the future, was secretly convinced her aunt would not
consent, was satisfied that she would have to reside with my sister
until she had come of age, and my lightest touching upon the subject
dispirited her. And, indeed, though I had talked big to Caudel, and to
my darling also, of my sister taking charge of her, I was not at all
sure--I ought undoubtedly to have asked the question of a lawyer--that
Lady Amelia Roscoe could not, as her guardian, claim her, and convey
her to school afresh, and do, in short, what she pleased with the child
until she was twenty-one years old. But all the same I felt cocksure
in my heart that it would never come to this. Our yachting trip I
regarded as a provision against all difficulties.

My mind was busy with these thoughts as I sat by her side looking at
her; but she loved me not less than I loved her, and so I never found
it hard to coax a smile into her sweet face and to brighten her eyes.

CHAPTER V

DIRTY WEATHER

I should only weary you by reciting the passage of the hours. After
breakfast I took Grace on deck for a turn, but she was glad to get
below again. All day long it continued dark weather, without a sight
of anything, save at intervals the shadowy figure of a coaster aslant
in the thickness, and once the loom of a huge ocean passenger boat,
sweeping at twelve or fourteen knots through the grey veil of vapour
that narrowed the horizon to within a mile of us. The wind, however,
remained a steady, fresh breeze, and throughout the day there was never
a rope handled nor a stitch of canvas reduced. The _Spitfire_ swung
steadfastly through it, in true sea-bruising style, sturdily flinging
the sea off her flaring bow, and whitening the water with the plunges
of her churning keel till the tail of her wake seemed to stretch to the
near sea line.

I will not feign, however, that I was perfectly comfortable in my mind.
Anything at sea but thick weather! I never pretended to be more than a
summer-holiday sailor, and such anxiety, as I should have felt had I
been alone, was now mig