ou, if you had been willing to
give up all your own people, to throw them lightly over, all of a
sudden, for a comparative stranger, treble your age, too"--(with a
sigh)--"like me."

He generously ignores the selfish fear of sea-sickness, of _personal_
suffering, which had occupied the fore-front of my mind.

"It will be much, _much_ better, and a far more sensible plan for both
of us," he continues, cheerfully. "Where would be the use of exposing
you to the discomfort and misery of what you hate most on earth for no
possible profit? I shall not be long away, shall be back almost before
you realize that I am gone, and meanwhile I should be far happier
thinking of you merry, and enjoying yourself with your brothers and
sisters at Tempest, than I should be seeing you bored and suffering,
with no one but me to amuse you--you know, dear--" (smiling pensively);
"do not be angry with me, it was no fault of yours; but you _did_ grow
rather tired of me at Dresden."

"I did not! I did not!" cry I, bursting into a passion of tears, and
asseverating all the more violently because I feel, with a sting of
remorse, that there is a tiny grain of truth--not so large a one as he
thinks, but still a _grain_ in his accusations. "It seemed rather
_quiet_ at first--I had always been used to such a noisy house, and
I missed the boys' chatter a little, perhaps; but _indeed_,
INDEED, that was all!"

"Was it? I dare say! I dare say!" he says, soothingly.

"You shall _not_ leave me behind," say I, still weeping with stormy
bitterness. "I _will not_ be left behind! What business have you to go
without me? Am I to be only a fair-weather wife to you? to go shares in
all your pleasant things, and then--when any thing hard or disagreeable
comes--to be left out. I tell you" (looking up at him with streaming
eyes) "that I _will not_! I WILL NOT!"

"My darling!" he says, looking most thoroughly concerned, I do not fancy
that crying women have formed a large part of his life-experience--"you
misunderstand me! I will own to you, that five minutes ago I did you an
injustice; but _now_ I know, I am thoroughly convinced, that you would
follow me without a murmur or a sulky look to the world's end--and"
(laughing) "be frightfully sea-sick all the way; but" (kindly patting my
heaving shoulder) "do you think that I want to be hampered with a little
invalid? and, supposing that I took you with me, whom should I have to
look after things at Tempest, and ke