I assured Miss Stanleigh that the Sylph was at her service.

Mrs. Stanleigh was a large bland woman, inclined to stoutness and to making confidences, with an intense dislike of the tropics and physical discomforts of any sort.  How her niece prevailed upon her to make that surreptitious trip to Muloa, which we set out upon two days later, I have never been able to imagine.  The accommodations aboard the schooner were cramped, to say the least, and the good lady had a perfect horror of volcanoes.  The fact that Lakalatcha had behind it a record of a century or more of good conduct did not weigh with her in the least.  She was convinced that it would blow its head off the moment the Sylph got within range.  She was fidgety, talkative, and continually concerned over the state of her complexion, inspecting it in the mirror of her bag at frequent intervals and using a powder-puff liberally to mitigate the pernicious effects of the tropic sun.  But once having been induced to make the voyage, I must admit she stuck manfully by her decision, ensconcing herself on deck with books and cushions and numerous other necessities to her comfort, and making the best of the sleeping quarters below.  As the captain of the Sylph, she wanted me to understand that she had intrusted her soul to my charge, declaring that she would not draw an easy breath until we were safe again in Port Charlotte.

“This dreadful business of Eleanor’s,” was the way she referred to our mission, and she got round quite naturally to telling me of Farquharson while acquainting me with her fears about volcanoes.  Some years before, Pompeii and Herculaneum had had a most unsettling effect upon her nerves.  Vesuvius was slightly in eruption at the time.  She confessed to never having had an easy moment while in Naples.  And it was in Naples that her niece and Farquharson had met.  It had been, as I surmised, a swift, romantic courtship, in which Farquharson, quite irreproachable in antecedents and manners, had played the part of an impetuous lover.  Italian skies had done the rest.  There was an immediate marriage, in spite of Mrs. Stanleigh’s protests, and the young couple were off on a honeymoon trip by themselves.  But when Mrs. Stanleigh rejoined her husband at Nice, and together they returned to their home in Sussex, a surprise was in store for them.  Eleanor was already there—­alone, crushed, and with lips absolutely sealed.  She had divested herself of everything that linked her to Farquharson; she refused to adopt her married name.

“I shall bless every saint in heaven when we have quite done with this dreadful business of Eleanor’s,” Mrs. Stanleigh confided to me from her deck-chair.  “This trip that she insists on making herself seems quite uncalled for.  But you needn’t think, Captain Barnaby, that I’m going to set foot on that dreadful island—­not even for the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Farquharson’s grave—­and I’m shameless enough to say that it would be a satisfaction.  If you could imagine the tenth part of what I have had to put up with, all these months we’ve been traveling about trying to locate the wretch!  No, indeed—­I shall stay right here on this boat and entrust Eleanor to your care while ashore.  And I should not think it ought to take long, now should it?”