The steamer was well ont to sea when Tony appeared on deck. It was a calm, starlight night,—fresh, but not cold. The few passengers, however, had sought their berths below, and the only one who lingered on deck was M'Grader and one other, who, wrapped in a large boat-cloak, lay fast asleep beside the binnacle.

“I was thinking you had turned in,” said M'Grader to Tony, “as you had not come up.”

“Give me a light; I want a smoke badly. I felt that something was wrong with me, though I did n't know what it was. Is this Rory here?”

“Yes, sound asleep, poor fellow.”

“I 'll wager a trifle he has a lighter heart than either of us, Sam.”

“It might easily be lighter than mine,” sighed M'Grader, heavily.

Tony sighed too, but said nothing, and they walked along side by side, with that short jerking stride men pace a deck with, feeling some sort of companionship, although no words were exchanged between them.

“You were nigh being late,” said M'Grader, at last “What detained you on shore?”

“I saw her!” said Tony, in a low muffled voice.

“You saw her! Why, you told me you were determined not to see her.”

“So I was, and so I intended. It came about by mere accident That strange fellow, Skeffy, you've heard me speak of,—he pushed me plump into the room where she was, and there was nothing to be done but to speak to her.”

“Well?”

“Well! I spoke,” said he, half gruffly; and then, as if correcting the roughness of his tone, added, “It was just as I said it would be; just as I told you. She liked me well enough as a brother, but never thought of me as anything else. All the interest she had taken in me was out of friendship. She didn't say this haughtily, not a bit; she felt herself much older than me, she said; that she felt herself better was like enough, but she never hinted it, but she let me feel pretty plainly that we were not made for each other; and though the lesson wasn't much to my liking, I began to see it was true.”

“Did you really?”

“I did,” said he, with a deep sigh. “I saw that all the love I had borne her was only paid back in a sort of feeling half compassionately, half kindly; that her interest in me was out of some desire to make something out of me; I mean, to force me to exert myself and do something,—anything besides living a hanger-on at a great house. I have a notion, too,—Heaven knows if there 's anything in it,—but I 've a notion, Sam, if she had never known me till now,—if she had never seen me idling and lounging about in that ambiguous position I held,—something between gamekeeper and reduced gentleman,—that I might have had a better chance.”

M'Gruder nodded a half-assent, and Tony continued: “I'll tell you why I think so. Whenever she asked me about the campaign and the way I was wounded, and what I had seen, there was quite a change in her voice, and she listened to what I said very differently from the way she heard me when I talked to her of my affection for her.”

“There 's no knowing them! there's no knowing them!” said M'Gruder, drearily; “and how did it end?”

“It ended that way.”

“What way?”

“Just as I told you. She said she'd always be the same as a sister to me, and that when I grew older and wiser I 'd see that there should never have been any closer tie between us. I can't repeat the words she used, but it was something to this purport,—that when a woman has been lecturing a man about his line of life, and trying to make something out of him, against the grain of his own indolence, she can't turn suddenly round and fall in love, even though he was in love with her.”

“She has a good head on her shoulders, she has,” muttered M'Gruder.

“I'd rather she had a little more heart,” said Tony, peevishly.

“That may be; but she's right, after all.”

“And why is she right? why should n't she see me as I am now, and not persist in looking at me as I used to be?”

“Just because it's not her humor, I suppose; at least, I don't know any better reason.”

Tony wheeled suddenly away from his companion, and took two or three turns alone. At last he said, “She never told me so, but I suppose the truth was, all this time she did think me very presumptuous; and that what her mother did not scruple to say to me in words, Alice had often said to her own heart.”

“You are rich enough now to make you her equal.”

“And I 'd rather be as poor as I used to be and have the hopes that have left me.”

M'Gruder gave a heavy sigh, and, turning away, leaned on the bulwark and hid his face. “I'm a bad comforter, Tony,” said he at last, and speaking with difficulty. “I did n't mean to have told you, for you have cares enough of your own, but I may as well tell you,—read that.” As he spoke, he drew out a letter and handed it to him; and Tony, stooping down beside the binnacle light, read it over twice.

“This is clear and clean beyond me,” exclaimed he, as he stood up. “From any other girl I could understand it; but Dolly,—Dolly Stewart, who never broke her word in her life,—I never knew her tell a lie as a little child. What can she mean by it?”

“Just what she says—there—she thought she could marry me, and she finds she cannot.”

“But why?”

“Ah! that's more than she likes to tell me,—more, mayhap, than she 'd tell any one.”

“Have you any clew to it?”

“None,—not the slightest.”

“Is your sister-in-law in it? Has she said or written anything that Dolly could resent?”

“No; don't you mark what she says at the end? 'You must not try to lighten any blame you would lay on me by thinking that any one has influenced me. The fault is all my own. It is I myself have to ask your forgiveness.'”

“Was there any coldness in your late letters? Was there anything that she could construe into change of affection?”

“Nothing,—nothing.”

“What will her father say to it?” said Tony, after a pause.

“She's afraid of that herself. You mind the words?—'If I meet forgiveness from you, I shall not from others, and my fault will bear its heavy punishment on a heart that is not too happy.' Poor thing! I do forgive her,—forgive her with all my heart; but it's a great blow, Tony.”

“If she was a capricious girl, I could understand it, but that's what she never was.”

“No, no; she was true and honest in all things.”

“It may be something about her father; he's an old man, and failing. She cannot bear to leave him, perhaps, and it's just possible she could n't bring herself to say it. Don't you think it might be that?”

“Don't give me a hope, Tony. Don't let me see a glimpse of light, my dear friend, if there 's to be no fulfilment after.”

The tone of emotion he spoke in made Tony unable to reply for some minutes. “I have no right to say this, it is true,” said he, kindly; “but it's the nearest guess I can make: I know, for she told me so herself, she 'd not go and be a governess again if she could help it.”

“Oh, if you were to be right, Tony! Oh, if it was to be as you suspect; for we could make him come out and live with us here! We've plenty of room, and it would be a pleasure to see him happy, and at rest, after his long life of labor. Let us read the letter over together, Tony, and see how it agrees with that thought;” and now they both crouched down beside the light, and read it over from end to end. Here and there were passages that they pondered over seriously, and some they read twice and even thrice, and although they brought to this task the desire to confirm a speculation, there was that in the tone of the letter that gave little ground for their hope. It was so self-accusing throughout, that it was plain she herself laid no comfort to her own heart in the thought of a high duty fulfilled.

“Are you of the same mind still?” asked M'Gruder, sadly, and with little of hopefulness in his voice; and Tony was silent.

“I see you are not. I see that you cannot give me such a hope.”

“Have you answered this yet?”

“Yes, I have written it; but it's not sent off. I kept it by me to read over, and see that there was nothing harsh or cruel,—nothing I would not say in cold blood; for oh, Tony! I will avow it was hard to forgive her; no, I don't mean that, but it was hard to bring myself to believe I had lost her forever. For a while I thought the best thing I could do was to comfort myself by thinking how false she was, and I took out all her letters, to convince me of her duplicity; but what do you think I found? They all showed me, what I never saw till then, that she was only going to be my wife out of a sort of resignation; that the grief and fretting of her poor father at leaving her penniless in the world was more than she could bear; and that to give him the comfort of his last few days in peace, she 'd make any sacrifice; and through all the letters, though I never saw it before, she laid stress on what she called doing her best to make me happy, but there was no word of being happy herself.”

Perhaps Tony did not lay the same stress on this that his friend did; perhaps no explanation of it came readily to his mind; at all events, he made no attempt at comment, and only said,—

“And what will your answer be?”

“What can it be?—to release her, of course.”

“Ay, but how will you say it?”

“Here's what I have written; it is the fourth attempt, and I don't much like it yet, but I can't do it better.”

And once more they turned to the light while M'Gruder read out his letter. It was a kind and feeling letter; it contained not one word of reproach, but it said that, into the home he had taken, and where he meant to be so happy, he 'd never put foot again. “You ought to have seen it, Tony,” said he, with a quiver in his voice. “It was all so neat and comfortable; and the little room I meant to be Dolly's own was hung round with prints, and there was a little terrace, with some orange-trees and myrtles, that would grow there all through the winter,—for it was a sheltered spot under the Monte Nero; but it's all over now.”

“Don't send off that letter. I mean, let me see her and speak to her before you write. I shall be at home, I hope, by Wednesday, and I'll go over to the Burnside,—or, better still, I 'll make my mother ask Dolly to come over to us. Dolly loves her as if she were her own mother, and if any one can influence her she will be that one.”

“But I'd not wish her to come round by persuasion, Tony. Dolly's a girl to have a will of her own, and she's never made op her mind to write me that letter without thinking well over it.”

“Perhaps she'll tell my mother her reasons. Perhaps she'll say why she draws back from her promise.”

“I don't even know that I'd like to drive her to that; it mightn't be quite fair.”

Tony flung away his cigar with impatience; he was irritated, for he bethought him of his own case, and how it was quite possible that no such scruples of delicacy would have interfered with him if he could only have managed to find out what was passing in Alice's mind.

“I 'm sure,” said M'Gruder, “you agree with me, Tony; and if she says, 'Don't hold me to my pledge,' I have no right to ask why.”

A short shrug of the shoulders was all Tony's answer.

“Not that I 'd object to your saying a word for me, Tony, if there was to be any hope from it,—saying what a warm friend could say of one he thought well of. You 've been living under the same roof with me, and you know more of my nature, and my ways and my temper, than most men, and mayhap what you could tell her might have its weight.”

“That I know and believe.”

“But don't think only of me, Tony. She's more to be considered than I am; and if this bargain was to be unhappy for her, it would only be misery for both of us. You'd not marry your own sweetheart against her own will?”

Tony neither agreed to nor dissented from this remark. The chances were that it was a proposition not so readily solved, and that he 'd like to have thought over it.

“No; I know you better than that,” said M'Gruder, once more.

“Perhaps not,” remarked Tony; but the tone certainly gave no positive assurance of a settled determination. “At all events, I 'll see what I can do for you.”

“If it was that she cares for somebody else that she could n't marry,—that her father disliked, or that he was too poor,—I 'd never say one word; because who can tell what changes may come in life, and the man that could n't support a wife now, in a year or two may be well off and thriving? And if it was that she really liked another,—you don't think that likely? Well, neither do I; but I say it here because I want to take in every consideration of the question; but I repeat, if it were so, I 'd never utter one word against it. Your mother, Tony, is more likely to find that out than any of us; and if she says Dolly's heart is given away already, that will be enough. I 'll not trouble nor torment her more.”

Tony grasped his friend's hand and shook it warmly, some vague suspicion darting through him at the time that this rag-merchant was more generous in his dealing with the woman he loved than he, Tony, would have been. Was it that he loved less, or was it that his love was more? Tony could n't tell; nor was it so very easy to resolve it either way.

As day broke, the steamer ran into Leghorn to land some passengers and take in others; and M'Gruder, while he took leave of Tony, pointed to a red-tiled roof rising amongst some olive-trees,—the quaint little pigeon-house on top surmounted with a weather-vane fashioned into an enormous letter S.

“There it is,” said he, with a shake in his voice; “that was to have been her home. I 'll not go near it till I hear from you, and you may tell her so. Tell her you saw it, Tony, and that it was a sweet little spot, where one might look for happiness if they could only bring a quiet heart to it. And above all, Tony, write to me frankly and openly, and don't give me any hopes if your own conscience tells you I have no right to them.”

With a strong grasp of the hand, and a long full look at each other in silence, M'Grader went over the side to his boat, and the steamer ploughed on her way to Marseilles.