She turned away from me and said no more.

It was time to take leave.  We were under her mother’s superintendence; we shook hands and that was all.

Matilda (Mrs. Eyrecourt’s maid) followed me downstairs to open the door.  I suppose I looked, as I felt, wretchedly enough.  The good creature tried to cheer me.  “Don’t be anxious about them,” she said; “I am used to traveling, sir—­and I’ll take care of them.”  She is a woman to be thoroughly depended on, a faithful and attached servant.  I made her a little present at parting, and I asked her if she would write to me from time to time.

Some people might consider this to be rather an undignified proceeding on my part.  I can only say it came naturally to me.  I am not a dignified man; and, when a person means kindly toward me, I don’t ask myself whether that person is higher or lower, richer or poorer, than I am.  We are, to my mind, on the same level when the same sympathy unites us.  Matilda was sufficiently acquainted with all that had passed to foresee, as I did, that there would be certain reservations in Stella’s letters to me.  “You shall have the whole truth from Me, sir, don’t doubt it,” she whispered.  I believed her.  When my heart is sore, give me a woman for my friend.  Whether she is lady or lady’s-maid, she is equally precious to me.

Cowes, March 2.—­I am in treaty with an agent for the hire of a yacht.

I must do something, and go somewhere.  Returning to Beaupark is out of the question.  People with tranquil minds can find pleasure in the society of their country neighbors.  I am a miserable creature, with a mind in a state of incessant disturbance.  Excellent fathers of families talking politics to me; exemplary mothers of families offering me matrimonial opportunities with their daughters—­that is what society means, if I go back to Devonshire.  No.  I will go for a cruise in the Mediterranean; and I will take one friend with me whose company I never weary of—­my dog.

The vessel is discovered—­a fine schooner of three hundred tons, just returned from a cruise to Madeira.  The sailing-master and crew only ask for a few days on shore.  In that time the surveyor will have examined the vessel, and the stores will be on board.

March 3.—­I have written to Stella, with a list of addresses at which letters will reach me; and I have sent another list to my faithful ally the maid.  When we leave Gibraltar, our course will be to Naples—­thence to Civita Vecchia, Leghorn, Genoa, Marseilles.  From any of those places, I am within easy traveling distance of St. Germain.

March 7.  At Sea.—­It is half-past six in the evening.  We have just passed the Eddystone Lighthouse, with the wind abeam.  The log registers ten knots an hour.

Fourth Extract.

Naples, May 10.—­The fair promise at the beginning of my voyage has not been fulfilled.  Owing to contrary winds, storms, and delays at Cadiz in repairing damages, we have only arrived at Naples this evening.  Under trying circumstances of all sorts, the yacht has behaved admirably.  A stouter and finer sea-boat never was built.