its smoke, the hawsers being thrown off, the gangways being
taken in, and then, looking through the porthole, I saw the grey pier
gliding behind us.

After a few moments, with a feeling of safety and a sense of danger
passed, I went up on deck. But oh, how little I knew what bitter pain I
was putting myself to!

We were just then swinging round the lighthouse which stands on the
south-east headland of the bay, and the flash of its revolving light in
my face as I reached the top of the cabin stairs brought back the memory
of the joyous and tumultuous scenes of Martin's last departure.

That, coupled and contrasted with the circumstances of my own flight,
stealthily, shamefully, and in the dead of night, gave me a pang that
was almost more than I could bear.

But my cup was not yet full. A few minutes afterwards we sailed in the
dark past the two headlands of Port Raa, and, looking up, I saw the
lights in the windows of my husband's house, and the glow over the glass
roof of the pavilion.

What would happen there to-morrow morning when it was discovered that I
was gone? What would happen to-morrow night when my father arrived,
ignorant of my flight, as I felt sure the malice of my husband would
keep him?

Little as I knew then of my father's real motives in giving that bizarre
and rather vulgar entertainment, I thought I saw and heard everything
that would occur.

I saw the dazzling spectacle, I saw the five hundred guests, I saw Alma
and my husband, and above all I saw my father, the old man stricken with
mortal maladies, the wounded lion whom the shadow of death itself could
not subdue, degraded to the dust in his hour of pride by the act of his
own child.

I heard his shouts of rage, his cries of fury, his imprecations on me as
one who should never touch a farthing of his fortune. And then I heard
the whispering of his "friends," who were telling the "true story" of my
disappearance, the tale of my "treacheries" to my husband--just as if
Satan had willed it that the only result of the foolish fete on which my
father had wasted his wealth like water should be the publication of my
shame.

But the bitterest part of my experience was still to come. In a few
minutes we sailed past the headlands of Port Raa, the lights of my
husband's house shot out of view like meteors on a murky night, and the
steamer turned her head to the open sea.

I was standing by a rope which crossed the bow and holding on to it to
sa