“So many conflicting directions confuse and mystify me, I confess.  Come, let me write down your wishes, and the matter can be arranged formally, which is always best in any case.  There, I think I have the gist of your idea,” he said a few moments later, as he pushed over to me a slip of paper to read and sign, which done, I shook hands with him cordially, preparing to go.  “But your receipt—­you have forgotten to take it up!”

“O General Curzon! the whole proceeding seems so ominous,” I said, turning back at the door to receive the proffered scrap, which, in another moment, dropped from my nerveless fingers, while these, clasped over my streaming eyes, forgot their office.

“My dear young lady,” he remonstrated, “I am shocked.  What can have occurred to impress you thus?  Not this mere routine of affairs, surely?—­Duncan, a glass of water here for Miss Monfort.”

“I do not know, I am sure, why I should be so weak for such a trifle,” I said, after a few swallows of ice-water had somewhat restored my equilibrium; “but I do feel very dismally about this voyage—­have done so ever since I left Beauseincourt.  This is the last straw on the camel’s back, believe me, General Curzon.  You must not reproach yourself in the least—­nor me; and now let me bid you farewell once more, perhaps eternally!”

These words of mine were remembered later in a very different spirit from that in which they were then received (one of incredulous compassion)—­remembered as are ever the last utterances of the doomed, whether innocent or guilty, in solemn awe and reverential tenderness, not unmingled with a superstitious faith in presentiment.

“Why, you look bluer than your very obvious veil, bluer than your invisible school-marmish stockings, bluer than the skies, or a blue bag, or Madame de Stael’s ‘Corinne,’ or Byron’s ‘dark-blue ocean,’” said Major Favraud, as he assisted me again into the carriage, where Dr. Durand and Marion awaited me, for, as I have said, we were now on our way to the vessel which was to bear me and my destinies forever from that lovely Southern land in which I had seen and suffered so much.

Dr. Durand looked serious at the sight of my woful aspect, and Marion mutely proffered her vinaigrette, gratefully accepted, as was the good doctor’s compassionate silence; but, as usual, Favraud, after having once gotten fairly under weigh, ran on.  “What is the use of bewailing the inevitable?” he pursued.  “We have all seen your penchant for Curzon, and his for you, for three days past; but Octavia is as tough as lignum-vitae, I regret to assure you, my dear Miss Harz, and your chance is as blue as your spirits, or the flames of snap-dragon, or Marion’s eyes.  You will have to just put up with the captain, I fear, for even the doctor there is in harness for life.  Southern women, you know, proverbially survive their husbands; and, as the suttee is out of fashion, they