Was she Right?

Chapter I

"WHAT A QUIXOTIC THING TO DO." " I SAY, Charlie, there she is again !" " Who ?" said Charlie Keith, lazily, without turn ing his head. " Look, this way ! Don't you see ? That pretty girl I told you of ; the one who flits about mys teriously like a ghost." Alan Frere's excitement was infectious enough to make his companion raise his eyes from the water, and glance away down the long empty deck. In the distance, her outline clear against the morning sky, he saw a slender figure approaching, clad in dark blue, with fluttering white ribbons on her sailor hat. " She doesn't dress like a ghost, at all events," he said, indifferently ; " and how you can see B ? whether she is pretty or not at this distance I cannot imagine." " Let us walk !" was all Frere's answer, seizing his arm hastily ; " we came up on purpose to get a constitutional, and I am not going to be done out of it !

Come along." Charlie suffered himself to be dragged from his comfortable posture with the air of a martyr, and the two young men began a slow promenade down the wet planks. " I cannot imagine who she is," said Frere, in a low tone ; " her name is Leicester, Miss Leicester, that's all I have been able to discover, but if you only saw her eyes ! She was always on deck for the first day or two, even when it was blowing a gale, so she is not a bad sailor ; yet now she keeps down below and never comes up at all, except just about this hour. Three mornings I have seen her come and go like a shadow. What on earth does she do with herself? I would give anything to find out. I am going to speak to her. She cannot refuse to say ' Good morning.' " The girl had been advancing straight towards them ; but just at this moment she crossed the deck, with a slight smile and bow, in acknowledg ment of Frere's polite salutation, and subsided into a long chair, to which a stewardess was making her way with some fruit and biscuits.

"Just my luck," growled Frere, turning on his " WHAT A QUIXOTIC THING TO DO." 3 heel. "I cannot go round and talk to her when she's feeding ! Why in the name of goodness does she want her breakfast now ?" " I dare say she won't be long over it," said his friend consolingly, with a regretful backward glance at his own comfortable corner. " Why don't you get hold of the Captain, and pump him, if you are so awfully anxious to know all about her ?" " So I did," said Frere, gloomily, " and he wouldn't tell me anything except her name, and that she is travelling under his care ; going to some little out-of-the-way island that I have never even heard of. Much good I got from him !" " Then we must invent a history for her," said Charlie ; " let us see ! First, I dare say she stays below for fear the sun should spoil her com plexion."

" She is not one of that sort," said Frere, with decision ; " and hers is not a complexion that spoils : it is one of those pale creamy skins that will stand anything." "You seem to have studied her pretty closely, considering that you don't know more than her name, old boy, eh ?" " My dear fellow," replied Frere, nodding his head sagaciously ; " there is not too much beauty going about in the world for a man not to know it when he does happen to come across it. Just you look at her eyes when you get a chance, and ? 4 see if they are not worth something ! It is a per fect shame to keep them shut up in some stuffy hole down below." " No doubt she has a dragon of a mother on board," said Charlie ; " a British matron, you know, with the wholesome horror of the tribe for strange young men — or perhaps an invalid husband " "Shut up," said Frere; "husband! a girl like that ? and I told you she was Miss Leicester."

" Then she is engaged to a planter, and going out to be 'spliced,'" hazarded Charlie, as a last suggestion. " I wouldn't bother about it if I were you. The pretty Margaret is much more your style, I am certain ; and there is no mystery about her at all events." " Cousins are very well in their way," grumbled Frere, still gazing discontentedly at the white hat ; " but they are too much like sisters to be altogether charming. They know all sorts of inconvenient things you did when you were a little boy, and are for ever bringing them up to you. There's not much romance about cousins /" The pathetic tone in which he spoke moved Charlie to laughter : the echo of his merriment floated to where Miss Leicester sat. She could scarcely help being conscious that the young men had been discussing her : she wondered what they were laughing at.

She knew perfectly well how Frere had watched "WHAT A QUIXOTIC THING TO DO." 5 her mysterious comings and goings, for the last three mornings, and it was impossible not to per ceive his anxiety to strike up an acquaintance with her. A little smile played about her lips. It certainly is rather amusing to excite people's curiosity, and then not gratify it ! But as she remembered the real reason of her seclusion, the brightness faded from her face, and she gazed sadly out over the sparkling sea. It was a face one could not easily overlook, as Frere had said ; though it was certainly not fault less in its beauty. A pure oval contour, delicately tinted with a sort of reflected rose-blush in the cheeks, rather than with colour itself; soft brown hair in tiny ripples, which no amount of sea-breezes could rob of their crispness ; grey eyes with long dark lashes.

A face whose sweetness lay greatly in the ex pression of the lips, red and soft, with all the curves tending upwards, as if smiles dwelt always near at hand. She was playing idly with, rather than eating with any relish, the biscuits the stewardess had brought her ; evidently the voyage so far had not evoked the " splendid appetite" which most sea travellers develop. I suppose nowhere is more food taken within a shorter limit of time than on board ship. Every body says that there is nothing else to do ; so ? everybody tumbles eagerly down to luncheon when breakfast is only just cleared away ; troops hungrily in to dinner when the gorgeous panorama of the sunset is being exhibited ; chatters over tea and hot-buttered toast when the stars are fairly burst ing out of the sky with brightness ; mixes glasses of steaming beverages in corners when the lights are being put out ; rolls into bed at last, only to be awakened at daybreak with the inevitable and curiously compounded matutinal coffee and ship biscuit, which herald another dawning.

Evidently Miss Leicester was not one of the ordinary class of passengers. Since the third day of the journey she had been seen at none of the noisy meals, preferring to " feed," as Frere had politely put it, in a corner of the deck, and then vanishing silently as she came, among the labyrinths that lay below. To-day was to be no exception to the rule. She pulled out her watch presently with a little sigh : it was hard to leave the sparkle of the sun, the free caressing of the joyous breeze, the great expanse of sapphire sea, but the allotted half-hour was over, and she rose to depart. Already the deck was getting fuller : several people looked at her curi ously as she passed ; and one or two, she imagined, shrank away from her, but no one spoke until, just at the top of the companion, she met the Captain.

" Ah ! my Sister of Charity," he exclaimed " WHAT A QUIXOTIC THING TO DO." 7 cheerily, holding out his hand with a pleasant heartiness of manner, " going to your hospital again ? I hope you are not killing yourself down there, eh ?" His keen eyes scrutinized her face closely for an instant, but she met his gaze smil ingly. " No, indeed, Captain Ellaby, I told you that I liked nursing, and my patient is such a sweet little fellow !" " He does not give you good nights though," said the Captain ; " the doctor let me into that secret. Well, it was your own doing, and if there is harm, why, it is done already ; only I know they will all be down on me. I was a fool to allow it at first." "Who are 'they,' Captain ?" she inquired, laughing ; " I am responsible to no one for what I do ! Aren't you aware I am of age, and independent ?"

The Captain shook his head. "You are under my protection, Miss Leicester, for this voyage, and I am sorry to say that 1 have found you a very self-willed young lady ! Oh ! you have heard that before, have you ? Well, I suppose I must not keep you now, or there will be a shindy somewhere. I wish that goose of a doctor would make your patient all right again, and stop all these cackling tongues. Oh, the ladies, the ladies !" The Captain lifted his brows expres sively. " Poor things," said Miss Leicester, " I am afraid ? we have managed to upset their equilibrium con siderably ; really I am sorry for them. But I must go, or I shall be accused of trying to give you the infection. Good-bye." " Be sure you come up again at dinner time," he called after her, and with a gesture of assent she disappeared.

"A pretty girl, and a good one too," murmured the Captain to himself, as he went his way thought fully — " it does seem a bit rough on her, to be sure, but by what that doctor fellow tells me it will soon be over. I wish it were, one way or the other, with all my heart." "A" 5J* 5j» 5fS *X* *l^ It was getting on towards noon. Charlie Keith had just finished the third volume of a novel, only commenced after breakfast ; and with his hat over his brows was sinking into a delicious lethargy, when Frere's voice, close beside him, made him open his eyes with a start. " I say, old fellow, I have found out the secret I" " What secret ?" asked Charlie, in a dismal voice, that betrayed his woeful want of interest in any but the one secret of how to sleep comfortably in a deck-chair. "Why, about that pretty girl, Miss Leicester don't you remember?"

" Um !" said Charlie, half-shutting his lids again ; " well, what about her ?" "WHAT A QUIXOTIC THING TO DO." 9 " It's measles !" said Frere, in a low and solemn tone. " You don't say so !" exclaimed Charlie, with a sudden revival of interest ; " I should never have thought it ! She bears it, or them, wonder fully well, but surely it is a little dangerous for her ?" "Stuff!" said Frere, contemptuously, "she hasn't got them, stupid, but she is nursing some one who has. Don't you recollect that unlucky Frenchman who pitched on his head, the day after we started, and has been off\\\?, head ever since ?" " Ah !" said Charlie, shutting his eyes once more, " I said she was engaged ! French, of course, and can't speak a word of English. Have a care, Frere, Frenchmen are awfully jealous !" " Do let a fellow speak," said Frere, impatiently ; " it is not the Frenchman that has the measles either, poor beggar.

Concussion of the brain is quite enough for him. But he has a child, a little boy, and the mother is dead. It seems that when Monsieur got this fall, Miss Leicester offered to look after the child ; their cabin vvas close to hers, and the stewardesses were overwhelmed with work in that rough weather and could not attend to him. The unfortunate little brat came out all over with measles ! and all the mammas on board got terri fied ; he was moved right away to another part of the ship, and Miss Leicester went with him. She ? 10 told the Captain she was not afraid, as she had just been with a houseful of cousins who were re covering from the same thing, and the doctor here said that she had been so much with the child, it was too late to separate them now. Besides, the girls who shared her cabin refused to let her come back to it when they knew what was up ; and she never comes on deck except very early in the mornings, or when we are at meals.

I believe I shall cut dinner to-day, and come up here instead. But it is awfully prosaic, isn't it ? And a great bore too. Fancy a pretty girl like that shut up all day nursing a Frenchman's child through measles /" "What a Quixotic thing to do!" said Charlie, half to himself ; " girls are queer creatures. How did you manage to find it all out ?" " Oh, I got hold of the Babbages, those pinched in girls I showed you yesterday, who looked as if they would snap in two in a gale. They were in her cabin, so they knew the whole story, and were in an awful fright about the infection. One of them told me they send for the doctor every day to look at their pulses and feel their tongues !" " It would serve them right if they caught it," said Charlie, with some asperity. " Heartless things ! They would not do a generous deed them selves, and they run down those that do !"

" Oh, I say, that's a little hard," said Frere, who "WHAT A QUIXOTIC THING TO DO." 11 was already on very good terms with the Misses Babbage, in spite of their apparent brittleness. " You wouldn't care to be bottled up with a man who might at any moment come out all over with smallpox ! Of course, on board a crowded boat like this one is bound to be careful." " Then take good care of yourself * Master Alan," said Charlie, re-arranging his position, preparatory to slumber. " Don't go and spoil your beauty with any of these infantile disorders, or the fair Margaret won't deign to look at you. I consider it a most distinct and providential warning. Steer clear, whatever you do, of the grey-eyed houri. Who knows, in these days, if infection may not be con veyed even in a bewitching smile !" " You might at least be grateful to me for having raked up a bit of news for you," said Frere ; " but you have been droning over that old novel till you don't know if you are alive or dead !

Come to the bar, and have something to wake you up." But Charlie was not disposed to move, and Frere de parted alone, to find his way very shortly into the lively company of the Babbages. ?

Chapter II. Charlie Keith

If Charlie had been dreaming before, he was certainly thinking now, despite the drowsiness of his appearance. Unlike Frere, he had come rapidly to the conclusion that this impulsive action on Miss Leicester's part was not by any means a prosaic one. On the contrary, it seemed to him something rather out of the common, and it must be con fessed, extraordinary. He had been accustomed to such a free and open life himself, that the very idea of confinement was disagreeable to him, and he had never been called upon for much self-sacrifice, except perhaps the amount involved in a ten minutes' visit to his father every day, which was possibly quite as irksome to one as to the other. Charlie Keith was the youngest son of a country squire; tall and tolerably good-looking; fair-haired, with blue eyes, and somewhat of a grave expression about the mouth, as if he had tasted of life's cup and found it was not altogether sweet.

His chin was firm, and his eyebrows strongly marked beneath his broad forehead : altogether he was one not likely to pass without remark along the world's highway. His father was a strange morose man, who had permitted the one great sorrow of his life to over shadow everything he looked upon, and to embitter his children's existence. That great sorrow had been the death of his wife, whom he had loved with an almost idolatrous passion. The event had occurred when their eldest boy Frank was ten, and little Charlie only four years old. Well did the children remember the desola tion which fell upon the household, when its sweet mistress was taken away. Mr. Keith shut himself up from all society, Frank was sent to school, and Charlie carefully kept in his nursery, seeing so little of his father that at times he almost forgot such a personage existed.

Once a year only was the house roused from its usual silence by the visit of " Grandpapa ;" Sir Francis Keith, a very digni fied and wealthy old gentleman ; and on these occasions Charlie invariably had a new velvet suit, and went down to dessert, returning to his nurse more than once with the declaration that " Grand papa was much more funny to look at than father, and not nearly so cross !" I doubt if the old baronet would have appreci ated these compliments, but his precise pomposity amused Charlie excessively, and his imitation of it WAS SHE RIGHT? at the nurserymeals was a source of great merriment to Sarah and himself. " And grandpapa says I am to be a planter," he announced one day, as he stamped up stairs with his hands full of almonds and raisins. " Frank will be ' Sir Frank,' you know, and get most of the money, but not until grandpapa and father are both dead, ' departed this death/ I think grand papa said : and I am to be a planter, and grow sugar!

Won't it be jolly? I'll send you home barrels and barrels of it, Sarah, and a little black boy to be your servant, and carry your parasol. Wouldn't you like that ?" Sarah, strange to say, did not appear enchanted at this prospect, and Charlie was proportionately disappointed. But the child's words, repeated at random from stray fragments of his elders' con versation, seemed likely to tell the story of his life. Just as his school career ended, old Sir Francis died, and Squire Keith succeeded him. Frank had chosen to enter the army, and was now in India. The gloomy silence of his home wearied him, and he and his father were always better friends when at a distance from each other. Charlie went from school to college, scoring no great successes, but equally, making no great failures, a good steady, ordinary sort of fellow, perhaps a trifle less light-hearted and mischievous than others of his age, but none the less a general favourite wherever he found himself.

His holidays were, as a rule, spent amongst his friends, and he and his father seemed likely never to make further acquaintance with each other. Even during these two last years, when they had been living under the same roof, a barrier of cold indifference existed between them, which Charlie had striven in vain to remove. Now, at the age of three-and-twenty, he was starting to take up sugar-planting on an estate which had formerly belonged to his grandmother, and had been devised by her to her only son, the present baronet. The prospect of the new life was not by any means distasteful to Charlie Keith. The last years had certainly been depressing ones, for his father had settled into a confirmed invalid, and grew more peevish and unapproach able every day. It was one of his fancies that Frank was waiting impatiently for his demise to launch into wild extravagances and bring the family name into disrepute.

Poor Frank was perfectly innocent of any such intentions, he had always been amply supplied with money, and his tastes were not expensive ; but the strange ideas of a solitary invalid are not easily combated. WAS SHE RIGHT? At last he accepted his position, and ceased to expect impossibilities from his parent. Charlie, who loved his brother loyally, though they had not been much together, fought many a battle with Sir Francis, for Frank's sake, but with small success. He was only told that it was the way of the world, young men were all alike ; he need not suppose that Frank was any exception to the rule, with various other adages, the truth of which the old assert, with as much vehemence as their juniors deny. It need not be said that when the day came for Charlie to start for the tropics, there were no heart-breaking farewells to be got through at the Hollies.

Perhaps a little moisture gathered in the old man's eyes, when he saw a look of his dead wife in Charlie's face, as he waved a last good bye from the carriage window : but there was no room in his heart for a new grief, and he went back to his lonely fireside still hugging the long past sorrow more closely to himself, and forgetting the living joys that might have blessed him even now. His servants whispered among themselves, that if the dead mistress could come back from her grave, they believed Master would be half sorry ; and they were not far wrong. He had got so to cling to his trouble that it had grown to be part of his very self, it would be impossible for him to exist without it now. So the old man sighed, and slept, and wrote pathetic sonnets to his wife's portrait, while upstairs the dust lay thick upon the cradles she had once rocked.

And the boys went out into the world to seek the sunshine they could not find at home. Charlie's friend Frere was a college chum, who, having plenty of money, and nothing to do, was " running across" with him, just for the fun of it, and also, perhaps, to see some pretty unknown cousins in Barbadoes. After this digression let us return to the lazy figure under the awning, and the multitudinous thoughts that were busying themselves beneath the straw hat. No ; Charlie certainly could not understand Miss Leicester's voluntary banishment : but somehow, he felt interested in her, and began to wish he could make her acquaintance. His knowledge of womankind was very small. Having never been blessed with sisters, and only possessing a vague memory of his mother, he had grown strangely unfamiliar with feminine influences.

In his holiday visits, the sisters of his school-fellows had always been looked upon as beings to whom it was necessary to be polite ; and who might be jolly enough to talk to when one had nothing else to do on a wet day ; but he had always been shy and awkward with them, and his last two years at home had rendered him more than ever impatient c ? of drawing-room conventionalities. It is true he thought sometimes, in a hazy indefinite fashion, that one day it might be as well to marry, but his ideal was an angelic being ; compounded of his mother's portrait, and the wonderful stories his nurse had told him of her perfections : he had never known what it was to fall in love. There were no treasured photographs, or faded flowers in the secret drawer of Charlie's desk. And now, as might be expected from one of his disposition, he was attracted by a sentiment ; a little bit of unlooked for heroism amid a sea of common-place reality.

He had scarcely seen Miss Leicester's face yet, but he felt that he must know her, must see for himself what she was like, must find out the motives which had prompted the generous deed she was doing. How long and tedious was the dinner that evening ! Charlie's table was usually presided over by the doctor, but to-night he was absent, and an un reasoning jealousy began to spring up in our hero's bosom. Was the Frenchman's child worse ? Were those two consulting together over him ? Or stay, per haps he was relieving guard while Miss Leicester got a mouthful of fresh air on deck. Frere's suggestion of "cutting dinner" had evidently been forgotten by that young gentleman : Charlie determined to take advantage of it. " No pudding, thanks," he said, in the very middle of Mrs. Fanshawe's pet story of the drowning of her favourite dog in the molasses tank.

Much to that lady's astonishment, he got quietly up and disappeared down the saloon among the crowd of hot and busy stewards. " Poor fellow, I thought he was a good sailor, but there certainly is a little swell to-night," said the planter's lady to her next door neighbour. " I am sorry he missed the end of my story, but I must remember to tell him to-morrow !" Luckily for Charlie, Frere, seated with a Miss Babbage on either side of him, was too much en grossed to note his flight, and he gained the deck unperceived. " Phew ! it's like heaven — after the other place !" was his mental comment as the cool fresh breeze greeted him ; " and now, after all, if she isn't here !" He looked about him anxiously, and at last he saw the outline of a figure leaning against the ship's side, at some distance, quite alone. Charlie went forward impulsively. ? 20

Chapter III. Making Advances

THE glories of sunset were flooding sea and sky with an unutterable radiance, and the very waves seemed hushed into silence at the sight. Miss Leicester was gazing westward, but hardly as if she saw the crimson and the gold : she seemed rather to look beyond sky and sea into some infinite dreamland of her own ; Charlie almost fancied that her eyes were bright with tears. Now that he had approached her, he was too shy to speak, although he knew that on board ship it is not necessary to wait for formal intro ductions. So he took one or two short turns beneath the awning, and endeavoured to hum " Home sweet Home," which, as he was not musical, turned out a failure. But his deck-shoes were noiseless, and his voice evidently inaudible, for Miss Leicester did not look round. At length, however, a little puff of wind caught the light shawl thrown round her shoulders ; it was sailing gaily overboard to astonish the fishes when Charlie deftly grasped it, invoking as he did so a fervent blessing upon the fortuitous accident.

" Thank you, I am much obliged," said Miss Leicester, a slight colour rising to her cheeks as she took it from him, " that was a very narrow escape ! but — " (with a little start) " surely dinner is not over yet ?" " Oh, no," said Charlie, " they'll be at it for half an-hour more, I expect. Sea-breezes and sunsets are not substantial enough for them" Miss Leicester smiled ; then growing grave again, she said : " Don't you know you ought not to come near me ? I am strictly ' tabu,' are not you afraid ?" " What of, and why ?" asked Charlie, feigning ignorance of her meaning, yet with an air of guilty knowledge that should have betrayed him. He had got the thin edge of the conversational wedge in, and he was quite determined to follow up his advantage. It was really astonishing to see how his bashfulness had deserted him, and how he seemed suddenly to discover the way to talk to a pretty girl !

" I am nursing a case of measles," Miss Leicester answered simply ; " and I have to keep out of everybody's way because of the infection." " Oh, if that is all, I am not afraid," said Charlie gaily ; " I got over all trifles of that sort before I was born, I mean before I knew anything about them. I hope it is not a near relation of yours who is ill ?" He put on such an air of polite indifference, that Miss Leicester could not, if she would, suspect him of curiosity. " Oh, no," she answered ; " it is a little French child, I never saw him before. His father had a terrible fall the day after we sailed, and has been unconscious ever since. None of the stewardesses could speak French, so the poor little boy was very miserable." " Till you stepped into the gap," said Charlie, — "it was lucky for him to find such a friend.

It was a poor return of your kindness to go and get ill immediately though. What will your relations think of it all ?" " Oh, they are reasonable beings," she answered lightly ; "they will see that it could not be helped." " That is one way of looking at it, certainly, but it appears to me that you are losing all the benefits of the voyage, and running a great risk into the bargain ; there are two sides to that question." Miss Leicester looked at him, as if she wondered what business it was of his, and Charlie trembled inwardly at his own temerity. "No," she answered, with a touch of decision in her tone : he saw that the grey eyes could flash in spite of their softness. " No, there was nobody else to do it. I should have been obliged to hesitate if there had been any of my people on board to object.