above women:  a remorseless intellect, an actual soul visible in the flesh.  She was truth.  Was I true?  Not so very false, yet how far from truth!  The stains on me (a modern man writing his history is fugitive and crepuscular in alluding to them, as a woman kneeling at the ear-guichet) burnt like the blood-spots on the criminal compelled to touch his victim by savage ordinance, which knew the savage and how to search him.  And these were faults of weakness rather than the sins of strength.  I might as fairly hope for absolution of them from Ottilia as from offended laws of my natural being, gentle though she was, and charitable.

Was I not guilty of letting her come on to me hoodwinked at this moment?  I had a faint memory of Miss Goodwin’s saying that she had been deceived, and I suggested a plan of holding aloof until she had warned the princess of my perfect recovery, to leave it at her option to see me.

‘Yes,’ Miss Goodwin assented:  ‘if you like, Harry.’

Her compassion for me only tentatively encouraged the idea.  ’It would, perhaps, be right.  You are the judge.  If you can do it.  You are acting bravely.’  She must have laughed at me in her heart.

The hours wore on.  My curse of introspection left me, and descending through the town to the pier, amid the breezy blue skirts and bonnet-strings, we watched the packet-boat approaching.  There was in advance one of the famous swift island wherries.  Something went wrong with it, for it was overtaken, and the steamer came in first.  I jumped on board, much bawled at.  Out of a crowd of unknown visages, Janet appeared:  my aunt Dorothy was near her.  The pair began chattering of my paleness, and wickedness in keeping my illness unknown to them.  They had seen Temple on an excursion to London; he had betrayed me, as he would have betrayed an archangel to Janet.

‘Will you not look at us, Harry?’ they both said.

The passengers were quitting the boat, strangers every one.

‘Harry, have we really offended you in coming?’ said Janet.

My aunt Dorothy took the blame on herself.

I scarcely noticed them, beyond leading them on to the pier-steps and leaving them under charge of Miss Goodwin, who had, in matters of luggage and porterage, the practical mind and aplomb of an Englishwoman that has passed much of her time on the Continent.  I fancied myself vilely duped by this lady.  The boat was empty of its passengers; a grumbling pier-man, wounded in his dignity, notified to me that there were fines for disregard of the Company’s rules and regulations.  His tone altered; he touched his hat:  ‘Didn’t know who you was, my lord.’  Janet overheard him, and her face was humorous.

‘We may break the rules, you see,’ I said to her.

‘We saw him landing on the other side of the water,’ she replied; so spontaneously did the circumstance turn her thoughts on my father.