'I only saw her name in the title-page.'
'What's all this? You did not see her?'
'Who? Did not some ladies come into the shop?'
'Some ladies! Is it possible? Why, I touched you to make you look.'
'I thought it was your frenzy about the tide. What now?—'
James made a gesture of despair. 'The loveliest creature I ever saw. You may see her yet, as she comes out. Come back!'
'Don't be so absurd,' said Fitzjocelyn, laughing, and, with instinctive dislike of staring, resisting his cousin's effort to wheel him round. 'What, you will?' withdrawing his arm. 'I shall put off without you, if you don't take care.'
And, laughing, he watched Jem hurry up the sloping street and turn the corner, then turned to pursue his own way, his steps much less lame and his looks far more healthful than they had been a month before. He reached the quay—narrow, slippery, and fishy, but not without beauty, as the green water lapped against the hewn stones, and rocked the little boats moored in the wide bay, sheltered by a richly-wooded promontory. 'Jem in a fit of romance! Well, whose fault will it be if we miss the tide? I'll sit in the boat, and read that poem again.— Oh! here he comes, out of breath. Well, Jem, did the heroine drop glove or handkerchief? Or, on a second view, was she minus an eye?'
'You were,' said James, hurrying breathlessly to unmoor the boat.
'Let me row,' said Louis; 'your breath and senses are both lost in the fair vision.'