Lord and Lady Ilfracombe had a pleasant time, yachting in the Mediterranean. The weather was perfect; their companions, Captain Knyvett and Mr Castelton, whom they had invited to accompany them, proved to be agreeable and entertaining; and the _Débutante_ was as luxurious a little vessel as can well be imagined. Nora, who was the only lady on board, fascinated the whole crew, gentlemen and sailors alike. Without being in the least masculine, she was as energetic and as much to the fore as any man aboard. She did not suffer from _mal de mer_, and had no feminine fads, fancies, or fears. She never failed to appear at the breakfast-table, or to sit up playing cards, or singing songs to her banjo, till the most wakeful among them was ready to turn in. She sat on deck in all weathers, even when they encountered a sharp squall and a downpour of rain. Lady Ilfracombe said she preferred the open air to the saloon cabin, and had her wicker chair lashed to the mast, and sat there, enveloped in her husband’s rough great coat and her own spicy little naval cap with a peaked brim, encouraging the efforts of the sailors, and chatting with her friends, as if she did not know the name of danger. She was always lively, interested, and good-tempered, and a general favourite with everybody. And yet the earl, although he admired and was proud of his wife, did not feel so happy in her possession as he had hoped to do. Nora’s disposition had not altered with marriage. What woman’s ever did? The prudence or coldness which had induced her to refuse her lover, a kiss or an embrace before marriage, extended in a great measure to her behaviour to her husband. Ilfracombe, like many another man in the same position, had imagined her coolness to be due to maidenly reserve, and thought that it would all disappear with wifehood. The greatest mistake men ever make. Of matrimony, it might be written, as the terms on which we are supposed to enter heaven are written of in the Bible, ‘Let the flirt be a flirt still, and the prude be a prude still.’ Marriage is far more likely to cool the ardent, than to warm the cold. And the Countess of Ilfracombe had proved the truth of it. She did not actually repulse her bridegroom, but she only permitted his attentions--she never returned them. The earl was more in love with her than ever he had been, perhaps for this very reason, but he could not help wishing sometimes, with a sigh of disappointment, that she would put her arms round his neck of her own accord, and press her lips to his, with some little show of passion. Perhaps at such moments a memory would come to him, of a perfect mouth that had been used to cling to his with unconcealed rapture, and a pair of white arms that would hold him so closely, that he would unlock them by force, and tell their owner jestingly, that she would squeeze him to death if she did not take greater care. He had enjoyed these things until he had wearied