I gave Lucy my arm, and we did walk up the road together, actually ascending the hill I had just descended; but all this did not induce me to overlook the fact that Lucy’s manner was hurried and excited.  The whole seemed so inexplicable, that I thought I would wait her own pleasure in the matter.

“Your friend, Marble,” she continued—­“I do not know why I ought not to say our friend, Marble, must be a very happy man at having, at length, discovered who his parents are, and to have discovered them to be so respectable and worthy of his affection.”

“As yet, he seems to be more bewildered than happy, as, indeed, does the whole family.  The thing has come on them so unexpectedly, that there has not been time to bring their feelings in harmony with the facts.”

“Family affection is a blessed thing, Miles,” Lucy resumed, after a short pause, speaking in her thoughtful manner; “there is little in this world that can compensate for its loss.  It must have been sad, sad, to the poor fellow to have lived so long without father, mother, sister, brother or any other known relative.”

“I believe Marble found it so; yet, I think, he felt the supposed disgrace of his birth more than his solitary condition.  The man has warm affections at the bottom, though he has a most uncouth manner of making it known.”

“I am surprised one so circumstanced never thought of marrying; he might, at least, have lived in the bosom of his own family, though he never knew that of a father.”

“These are the suggestions of a tender and devoted female heart, dear Lucy; but, what has a sailor to do with a wife?  I have heard it said Sir John Jervis—­the present Lord St. Vincent—­always declared a married seaman, a seaman spoiled; and I believe Marble loves a ship so well he would hardly know how to love a woman.”

Lucy made no answer to this indiscreet and foolish speech.  Why it was made, I scarce knew myself; but the heart has its bitter moods, when it prompts sentiments and declarations that are very little in accordance with its real impulses.  I was so much ashamed of what I had just said, and, in truth, so much frightened, that, instead of attempting to laugh it off, as a silly, unmeaning opinion, or endeavouring to explain that this was not my own way of thinking, I walked on some distance in silence, myself, and suffered my companion to imitate me in this particular.  I have since had reason to think that Lucy was not pleased at my manner of treating the subject, though, blessed creature! she had another matter to communicate, that lay too heavy on her heart, to allow one of her generous, disinterested nature to think much of anything else.

“Miles,” Lucy, at length, broke the silence, by saying—­“I wish, I do wish we had not met that other sloop this morning.”