if I live to be a hundred--which
is not unlikely, for I come of a long-lived race by my mother's side,
and winds and waters have so toughened me that I ought to last with the
best of my ancestors. There was a Latin tag Mr. Davies used to tease me
with about the Feasts of the Gods. Feasts of the Gods, forsooth! They
could not compare, I'll dare wager, with that repast in the Dolphin Room
of the Noble Rose, on that crisp spring day when I and the world were
younger.

I might well be excused, a raw provincial lad, if I did feel shyish in
the presence of such gentlefolk. But they were such true gentlefolk that
it was impossible for long not to feel at ease in their society. So when
I learnt that Lancelot had not changed one whit in his love for me, and
when I found that not the Captain alone, but his beautiful niece too,
did everything to make me feel happy and at home--why, it would have
been churlish of me not to have aided their gentleness by making myself
as agreeable as might be.

[Illustration: "HE BROKE OFF IN WHAT HE WAS SAYING TO CLASP MY HAND."]

The Captain had so much to say of his scheme or dream, and we were so
content to listen like good children, that we did not rise from table
till nigh three o'clock. It was such a happy dream, and so feelingly
depicted by the Captain, that it never occurred to me for a moment to
doubt in any wise its feasibility, or to feel aught but sure that I was
engaged in the greatest undertaking wherein man had ever shared. When we
did part at last, on the understanding that I was to attend upon the
Captain daily, I shook hands with Marjorie as with an old friend. I was
for shaking hands with Lancelot, too, but he would not hear of it. He
would walk home with me, he said; he could not lose me so soon after
finding me again. So we issued out of the Noble Rose together,
arm-in-arm, in very happy mind.

We walked for a few paces in silence, the sweet silence that often falls
upon long-parted friends when their hearts are too full for parley. Then
Lancelot asked me suddenly 'Is she not wonderful?' and I could answer
no more than 'indeed,' for she seemed to me the most wonderful creature
the world had ever seen, which opinion I entertain and cherish to this
very day and hour.

'Is she not better than her picture in little?' he questioned, and again
I had no more to say than 'indeed,' though I would have liked to find
other words for my thoughts. By this time we had come to the way wh