Priscilla, with Captain Welsh.

A faint shudder passed over her. She shut her eyes and shook her head.

Our interview satisfied my heart's hunger no further. The Verona's
erratic voyage had cut me off from letters.

Janet might be a widow, for aught I knew. She was always Janet to me;
but why at liberty? why many months at Sarkeld, the guest of the
princess? Was she neither maid nor widow--a wife flown from a brutal
husband? or separated, and forcibly free? Under such conditions Ottilia
would not have commanded my return but what was I to imagine? A boiling
couple of hours divided me from the time for dressing, when, as I
meditated, I could put a chance question or two to the man commissioned
to wait on me, and hear whether the English lady was a Fraulein. The
Margravine and Prince Ernest were absent. Hermann worked in his museum,
displaying his treasures to Colonel Heddon. I sat with the ladies in the
airy look-out tower of the lake-palace, a prey to intense speculations,
which devoured themselves and changed from fire to smoke, while I
recounted the adventures of our ship's voyage, and they behaved as if
there were nothing to tell me in turn, each a sphinx holding the secret I
thirsted for. I should not certainly have thirsted much if Janet had met
me as far half-way as a delicate woman may advance. The mystery lay in
her evident affection, her apparent freedom and unfathomable reserve, and
her desire that I should see Temple before she threw off her feminine
armour, to which, judging by the indications, Ottilia seemed to me to
accede.

My old friend was spied first by his sweetheart Lucy, winding dilatorily
over the hill away from Sarkeld, in one of the carriages sent to meet