“If you want my advice,” he proceeded, “take him home at once.  Don’t subject him to further excitement, when the result of the duel is known in the town.  If it ends in our appearing in a court of law, it will be a mere formality in this case, and you can surrender when the time comes.  Leave me your address in London.”

I felt that the wisest thing I could do was to follow his advice.  The boat crossed to Folkestone at an early hour that day—­we had no time to lose.  Romayne offered no objection to our return to England; he seemed perfectly careless what became of him.  “Leave me quiet,” he said; “and do as you like.”  I wrote a few lines to Lady Berrick’s medical attendant, informing him of the circumstances.  A quarter of an hour afterward we were on board the steamboat.

There were very few passengers.  After we had left the harbor, my attention was attracted by a young English lady—­traveling, apparently, with her mother.  As we passed her on the deck she looked at Romayne with compassionate interest so vividly expressed in her beautiful face that I imagined they might be acquainted.  With some difficulty, I prevailed sufficiently over the torpor that possessed him to induce him to look at our fellow passenger.

“Do you know that charming person?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, with the weariest indifference.  “I never saw her before.  I’m tired—­tired—­tired!  Don’t speak to me; leave me by myself.”

I left him.  His rare personal attractions—­of which, let me add, he never appeared to be conscious—­had evidently made their natural appeal to the interest and admiration of the young lady who had met him by chance.  The expression of resigned sadness and suffering, now visible in his face, added greatly no doubt to the influence that he had unconsciously exercised over the sympathies of a delicate and sensitive woman.  It was no uncommon circumstance in his past experience of the sex—­as I myself well knew—­to be the object, not of admiration only, but of true and ardent love.  He had never reciprocated the passion—­had never even appeared to take it seriously.  Marriage might, as the phrase is, be the salvation of him.  Would he ever marry?

Leaning over the bulwark, idly pursuing this train of thought, I was recalled to present things by a low sweet voice—­the voice of the lady of whom I had been thinking.

“Excuse me for disturbing you,” she said; “I think your friend wants you.”

She spoke with the modesty and self-possession of a highly-bred woman.  A little heightening of her color made her, to my eyes, more beautiful than ever.  I thanked her, and hastened back to Romayne.

He was standing by the barred skylight which guarded the machinery.  I instantly noticed a change in him.  His eyes wandering here and there, in search of me, had more than recovered their animation—­there was a wild look of terror in them.  He seized me roughly by the arm and pointed down to the engine-room.