On landing we proceeded to the Queen's Hotel where I ordered dinner, and then wrote a letter to my cousin asking him and his wife to come to us as speedily as possible, adding that we had been very nearly shipwrecked and had met with some strange adventures, the narrative of which, if attempted, must fill a very considerable bundle of manuscript. This done I told the waiter to procure me a mounted messenger, and within three quarters of an hour of our arrival at Penzance my letter was on its way at a hard gallop to the little straggling village of —— of which Frank Howe was vicar.
When we had dined I stood with Grace at the window of the sitting-room that overlooked the noble bight of Mount's Bay. On our left rose the lofty Marazion hills, with the little town of Marazion lying white at the eastern base of the range, and beyond ran the dark blue loom of Cudden Point melting into the dim azure of the Lizard district. The sun was in the west, his light was red, and this warm dye made a glorious autumn picture of that sweep of cliff embraced waters. Several colliers lay high and dry on the mud just abreast of the town, but the Spitfire had vanished, towed, as I might suppose, by boats to the security of the harbour that was hidden from me. Far past the distant giant foreland point was an orange-coloured sail showing like a delicate edge of cloud over the edge of the blue, lens-like rim of the sea. I thought of the Carthusian—of our sea marriage—and lifting my darling's hand, toyed mechanically with the wedding-ring upon it, whilst I looked at her.
She had been pale and nervous ever since our arrival; her delight in being safely ashore at last had seemed but a short-lived sensation. She looked at the ring with which I was toying and said:
"What shall I do with this thing?"
"Go on wearing it down to the time when it will be necessary to remove it in order to replace it."
"And what will your cousin think of me—a clergyman! And his wife is a clergyman's daughter. Oh, Herbert!" she added, sighing in a shuddering way.
"They will admire you, they will consider you the sweetest of girls. What else can they think, Grace?"
But her mood was what it had been at the time we sailed out of Boulogne harbour. She was depressed, frightened, acutely sensitive, dreading opinion, and all to such a degree that she could utter nothing which was not full of apprehension and regret, so that anyone who had watched us unseen must have concluded that either we were not lovers, or that we had been married much longer than our tender years suggested. But lovers we were all the same! and however it might have been with her in that little passage of worry, uncertainty, and nervousness, she had never been dearer to me; never had I felt prouder of winning her heart, nor more triumphant in my possession of her.