Do you happen to know what takes him so far from
home?"

"Can't say exactly," replied the other. "I think some one told me his
affairs in China require looking after, and his daughter's health
necessitates a long sea-voyage."

"Health!" exclaimed Edgar, striving to look and speak in a comparatively
indifferent manner. "She was quite well when I saw her last."

"Very likely," said the owner, with a smile, "but it does not take long
to make a young lady ill--especially when her heart is touched. Some
sort of rumour floats in my mind to the effect that Miss Hazlit is going
out to China to be married, or requires to go out because she doesn't
want to be married--I forget which. But it comes pretty much to the
same thing in the end!"

"Hah!" said Edgar shortly.

If he had said "Oh!" in tones of agony, it would have been more truly
expressive of his feelings.

The moment he got out of the office and felt the cool air of the street
he repented of his decision and pronounced himself to be a consummate
donkey!

"There," thought he, "I've made a fool of myself. I've engaged for a
long voyage in a capacity which precludes the possibility of my
associating with the passengers, for not only must nearly all my waking
hours be spent down beside the engine, but when I come up to cool myself
I must perforce do so in dirty costume, with oily hands and face, quite
in an unfit state to be seen by Aileen, and without the slightest right
to take any notice of her. Oh! Donkey--goose that you are, Eddy! But
you've done it now, and can't undo it, therefore you must go through
with it."

Thinking of himself in this lowly strain he went home to the solitude of
his lodging, sat down before his tea-table, thrust both hands into his
pockets, and, in a by no means unhappy frame of mind, brooded over his
trials and sorrows.

Let us change the scene now. We are out upon the sea--in a floating
palace. And oh how that palace rushes onward, ever onward, without
rest, without check, night and day, cleaving its way irresistibly
through the mighty deep. Mighty! Ah! _how_ mighty no one on board can
tell so well as that thin, gentle, evidently dying youth who leans over
the stern watching the screws and the "wake" that seems to rush behind,
marking off, as it were mile by mile, the vast and ever-increasing
space--never to be re-traversed he knows full well--that separates him
from home and all that is dear to him on earth.

The pala