eeks, or
months have been spent in conversation, in reading, perhaps in toil and
danger, and they have not thought much about it. But one day they wake
up to the fact that these little or great things bind them, as forming
the portion of their lives that have touched; and as they talk over the
incidents they remember they feel unaccountably drawn to each other by
the past. Margaret and Claudius knew this on the first evening they
spent together on shore. The confusion of landing, the custom-house, the
strange quarters in the great hotel--all composed a drop-curtain
shutting off the ocean scene, and ending thus an episode of their
life-drama. A new act was beginning for them, and they both knew how
much might depend on the way in which it was begun, and neither dared
plan how it should end. At all events, they were not to be separated
yet, and neither anticipated such a thing.

Little by little their voices dropped as they talked, and they recked
little of the others, as the dark cheek of the woman flushed with
interest, and the blue light shone in the man's eyes. Their companions
on the voyage were well used to seeing them thus together, and hardly
noticed them, but Mr. Bellingham's bright eyes stole a glance from time
to time at the beautiful pair in their corner, and the stories of youth
and daring and love, that he seemed so full of this evening, flashed
with an unwonted brilliancy. He made up his mind that the two were
desperately, hopelessly, in love, and he had taken a fancy to Claudius
from the first. There was no reason why they should not be, and he loved
to build up romances, always ending happily, in his fertile imagination.

But at last it was "good-night." Mr. Bellingham was not the man to spend
the entire evening in one house, and he moved towards Margaret, hating
to disturb the couple, but yet determined to do it. He rose, therefore,
still talking, and, as the Duke rose also, cleverly led him round the
chairs until within speaking distance of Margaret, who was still
absorbed in her conversation. Then, having finished the one thread, he
turned round.

"By the by, Countess," he said, "I remember once--" and he told a
graceful anecdote of Margaret's grandmother, which delighted every one,
after which he bowed, like a young lover of twenty, to each of the three
ladies, and departed.

The party dispersed, the Duke and Claudius for half an hour's chat and
a cigar, and the ladies to their rooms. But Claudius