"Then, it shall be Paris, Brussels, and Rome according to your own programme," said I.
She coloured, and said something about there being plenty of time to talk about such a matter as that, and went to the rail and leaned over it, watching the distant noble mass of land in a reverie upon which I would not intrude, so sweet did she look with her profile showing with ivory-like delicacy against the green and blue of the east where the tints were hardening to the gathering of the evening shadow there, whilst her rich hair blown by the breeze seemed to tremble into fire to the now almost level pouring of the red splendour in the west.
When the sun had fairly set I took her below, for the wind seemed to come on a sudden with the damp of night in it, and a bite as shrewd in its abruptness as frost. I had made no other provision in the shape of amusement for our sea trip of three, four, or five days as it might happen, than a small parcel of novels, scarcely doubting that all the diversion we should need must lie in each other's company. And to be sure we managed to kill the time very agreeably without the help of fiction, though we both owned, when the little cabin clock pointed to half-past nine, and she looking up at it, and yawning behind her white fingers, exclaimed, that she felt tired and would go to bed; I say, we both owned that the day had seemed a desperately long one—to be sure, with us it had begun very early—and I could not help adding that on the whole a honeymoon spent aboard a yacht the size of the Spitfire would soon grow a very slow business in spite of crayons and paint-boxes.
As we lingered hand in hand, she exclaimed, "What will mam'selle have been saying all to-day?"
"The excitement," said I, "has been tremendous. Mam'selle fainted to begin with. Father Jerome was sent for, and I can see him with my mind's eye taking the ground as he makes for the château with the strides of a pantomime policeman chasing the clown. What titterings, what exclamations, what Mon Dieux! and quelle horreurs! among the girls! How many of them would like to be you? When they find that rope-ladder dangling—the burglarious bull's-eye lamp at the foot of it—"
"How could we have done it?" she interrupted, looking at me with a pale face and a working lip.
When she had withdrawn I put on a pea-coat, and filling a pipe, stepped on deck. The dusk was clear, but of a darker shade than that of the preceding night; there was not more wind than had been blowing throughout the day; but the sky was full of large swollen-clouds rolling in shadows of giant wings athwart the stars, and the gloom of them was in the atmosphere. Here and there showed a ship's light, some faint gleam of red or green windily coming and going out upon the weltering obscurity, but away to starboard the horizon ran black, without a single break of shore light that I could see. The yacht was swarming through it under all canvas, humming as she went. Her pace, if it lasted, would, I knew, speedily terminate this sea-going passage of our elopement, and I looked over the stern very well pleased to witness the white sweep of the wake melting at a little distance into a mere elusive faintness.
Caudel stood near the helm,
"This will do, I think," said I.
"Ay, sir," he answered; "she's finding her heels now. See that there brig out yonder?" and his arm pointed out against the stars over the horizon to a dim green light on the right of our wake astern. "She was ahead of us half an hour ago, and I allow she was walking too—warn't she, Job?"