A minute or two after the boat in which Arthur was being piloted to the shore, under the guidance of the manager of Miles’ Hotel, had left the side of the vessel, Mrs. Carr’s steam-launch shot up alongside of them, its brass-work gleaming in the sunlight like polished gold.  On the deck, near the little wheel, stood Mrs. Carr herself, and by her side, her martial cloak around her, lay Miss Terry, still as any log.

“Mr. Heigham,” said Mrs. Carr, in a voice that sounded across the water like a silver bell, “I forgot that you will not be able to find your way to my place by yourself to-morrow, so I will send down a bullock-car to fetch you; you have to travel about with bullocks here, you know.  Good-bye,” and, before he could answer, the launch’s head was round, and she was tearing through the swell at the rate of fourteen knots.

“That’s her private launch,” said the manager of the hotel to Arthur, “it is the quickest in the island, and she always goes at full steam.  She must have come some way round to tell you that, too.  There’s her place, over there.”

“Mrs. Carr comes here every year, does she not?”

“Oh, yes, every year; but she is very early this year; our season does not begin yet, you know.  She is a great blessing to the place, she gives so much away to the poor peasants.  At first she used to come with old Mr. Carr, and a wonderful nurse they say she made to the old gentleman till he died.”

“Does she entertain much?”

“Not as a rule, but sometimes she gives great balls, splendid affairs, and a series of dinner-parties that are the talk of the island.  She hardly ever goes out anywhere, which makes the ladies in the place angry, but, I believe, that they all go to her balls and dinners.  Mostly, she spends her time up in the hills, collecting butterflies and beetles.  She has got the most wonderful collection of Egyptian curiosities up at the house there, too, though why she keeps them here instead of in England, I am sure I don’t know.  Her husband began the collection when he was a young man, and collected all his life, and she has gone on with it since.”

“I wonder that she has not married again.”

“Well, it can’t be for want of asking, if half of what they say is true; for, according to that, every single gentleman under fifty who has been at Madeira during the last five years has had a try at her, but she wouldn’t look at one of them.  But of course that is gossip—­ and here we are at the landing-place.  Sit steady, sir; those fellows will pull the boat up.”

Had it not been for the pre-occupied and uncomfortable state of his mind, that took the flavour out of all that he did, and persistently thrust a skeleton amidst the flowers of every landscape, Arthur should by rights have enjoyed himself very much at Madeira.