led so much,' said Lesbia, with a sigh. 'I have
been nowhere and seen nothing. I feel like a child who has been shut up
in a nursery all its life, and knows of no world beyond four walls.'

'Not to travel is not to live,' said Don Gomez.

'I am to be in Italy next November, I believe,' said Lesbia, not caring
to own that this Italian trip was to be her honeymoon.

'Italy!' exclaimed the Spaniard, contemptuously. 'Once the finishing
school of the English nobility; now the happy hunting-ground of the
Cockney tourist and the prosperous Yankee. All the poetry of Italy has
been dried up, and the whole country vulgarised. If you want romance in
the old world go to Spain; in the new, try Peru or Brazil, Mexico or
California.'

'I am afraid I am not adventurous enough to go so far.'

'No: women cling to beaten tracks.'

'We obey our masters,' answered Lesbia, meekly.

'Ah, I forgot. You are to have a master--and soon. I heard as much
before I saw you to-night.'

Lesbia half rose, as if to leave this cool retreat above the rippling
tide.

'Yes, it is all settled,' she said; 'and now I think I must go back.
Lady Kirkbank will be wondering what has become of me.'

'Let her wonder a little longer,' said Don Gomez. 'Why should we hurry
away from this delightful spot? Why break the spell of--the river? Life
has so few moments of perfect contentment. If this is one with you--as
it is with me--let us make the most of it. Lady Lesbia, do you see those
weeds yonder, drifting with the tide, drifting side by side, touching as
they drift? They have met heaven knows how, and will part heaven knows
where, on their way to the sea; but they let themselves go with the
tide. We have met like those poor weeds. Don't let us part till the tide
parts us.'

Lesbia gave a little sigh, and submitted. She had talked of women
obeying their masters; and the implication was that she meant to obey
Mr. Smithson. But there is a fate in these things; and the man who was
to be her master, whose lightest breath was to sway her, whose lightest
look was to rule her, was here at her side in the silence of the summer
night.

They talked long, but of indifferent subjects; and their talk might have
been heard by every member of the Orleans Club, and no harm done. Yet
words and phrases count for very little in such a case. It is the tone,
it is the melody of a voice, it is the magic of the hour that tells.

The tide came, in the person of Mr. Smithson, a