"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