The letter itself was almost incoherent. She knew, she said, whom
she had to thank for his departure. That vixen, that hussy, that
stuck-up minx, who treated him like a dog and yet grudged him to
another, who, God help her, loved him too well for her own good--
it was her ladyship she had to thank for spoiling everything and
carrying him away. Was he not man enough to assert himself and
leave a ship where he was put upon so awful? Let him ask her
mightiness in two words, yes or no; and then when he had come down
from the clouds and had learned the truth, poor silly fool--then
let him come back to his Cassie, who loved him so dear, and who
(if she did say it herself) had a heart worth fifty of his
mistress and didn't need no powder to set off her complexion. It
ended with a piteous appeal to his compassion and besought him to
write to her from the nearest port.

Frank sighed as he read it. Everything in the world seemed wrong
and at cross-purposes. Those who had one thing invariably longed
for something else, and there was no content or happiness or
satisfaction anywhere. The better off were the acquiescent, who
took the good and the bad with the same composure and found their
only pleasure in their work. Best off of all were the dead whose
sufferings were over. But after all it was sweet to be loved, even
if one did not love back, and Frank was very tender with the
little letter and put it carefully in his pocket-book. Yes, it was
sweet to be loved. He said this over and over to himself, and
wondered whether Florence felt the same to him as he did to
Cassie. It seemed to explain so much. It seemed the key to her
strange regard for him. He asked himself whether it could be true
that she had wilfully ordered the ship to sea in order to prevent