Bluebell had glided down the companion again.  The mails were landed, the pilot came on board, and next morning they were steaming into the Mersey.  Many of the passengers had got letters, and were talking of their plans and fussing about luggage.

“How refreshing it is to see some one without that business look!” cried Mr. Dutton to Bluebell, who was leisurely reading in the saloon.  “But have you no goods or chattels, Miss Leigh?  And ought not you to have a letter with sailing orders?”

“I have two boxes somewhere in the hold.  No, I didn’t expect a letter, I was to telegraph at Liverpool, and come right off.  This is the address:—­

  “Mrs. Leighton,
  “Leighton Court
  “Calmshire.”

“Why, that is my line!” said the sailor, mendaciously.  “I can travel with you as far as Calmshire.”

“Can you really?  How very strange!  But I suppose England is a small place,” said Bluebell, naively.

“Oh, extremely insignificant!  I shall be able to see you safely to your journey’s end.  So that’s all settled.  Now I will go and look if your luggage is coming up, for I suppose we shall land in an hour or two.”

Bluebell’s curiosity was excited by the Times newspaper, which a gentleman had just laid down.  It was only the advertisement sheet, for some one else had immediately snapped up the rest, and she glanced vaguely down the first columns, puzzling over such enigmatical insertions as “Our tree, our bridge, our walk,” “What shall we do with the Tusk?” and that “John is entreated to write and send remittances to his afflicted Teapot,”—­when her eye lit upon the following name among the deaths:—­

  “On the 22nd inst., at Leighton Court, of scarlet fever, Evelyn Cora,
  only child of Mrs. and the late Henry Leighton, Esq., aged eleven
  years.”

Bluebell sat petrified,—­the ground cut beneath her feet,—­she could only be shocked for the poor child whom she had never known.  But what was to become of herself in a strange land, with no place to go to?  Besides Leighton Court there was not a place in all England, except an inn, that she would have a right to enter; and in a few minutes more the shelter of the ship would be withdrawn,—­even now she could see the smoke of the tug coming to disembark them.  Perfectly appalled and unnerved, she pushed the paragraph towards Mr. Dutton, who had just entered, and gazed helplessly at him with large frightened eyes.

He took in the situation at a glance, and the thought that had struck him before of the strangeness of sending this beautiful girl, like a bale of goods, to an unknown country, where she had no connections, returned with confirmed force.  How friendless she was!  But slenderly supplied with money, of course.  A daring possibility had darted into his mind.  It was an irresistible temptation,—­and sailors are proverbially reckless.  Matrimony hitherto had never entered into his views.  It