How confidently he had believed that he should see the long lashes lowered over those beautiful eyes, and the maiden flush of combined shyness and pleasure mount to that delicate cheek, as he poured forth his tale of love to her. Others had watched the young couple sitting so close together on the poop that morning, and guessed what was going on. Others had seen Richard Egerton bending lower and lower over his pretty fellow-passenger, and gazing into her eyes as though he would read her very soul, as he whispered his hopes to her. The poor young fellow had been very modest over it, but he had made so sure that Amy Herbert’s looks and actions could not have deceived him, that he had almost thanked her beforehand for the answer he expected to receive. And she had listened to his proposal with well-feigned surprise, and rejected it with ill-advised haste. She had thought in her silly, girlish inexperience that it was more correct and womanly to appear horrified at the first idea of marriage, and she had been almost as despairing as himself as she saw Richard Egerton take her at her word and turn away without a second appeal, to hide his wounded pride below. She was deeply repenting her abrupt dismissal of him as she flirted on the poop with Captain Barrington, who was returning from leave to join his regiment in Barbadoes. But how was poor Egerton to know that, as he cast himself dejectedly upon his narrow berth and lay, face downwards, with his eyes pressed upon the pillow, lest the hot tears that scorched them should overflow and betray his weakness? The sound of her voice tortured him. He believed that she must be in earnest in showing a preference for Captain Barrington, and he was not yet strong enough to watch her fair face smiling on another man. So he delivered himself over to melancholy, and tried hard to believe that he would not have things other than they were. ‘Whatever is, is best,’ he kept on repeating inwardly. ‘It will not do for me to preach a lesson to another man that I am unable to apply to myself. Besides, it is true. I know it to be so. My whole existence has proved it hitherto.’ Yet the smiling, sunlit pastures and cane fields, to which he was taking his way, and which had seemed so beautiful in prospect when he had hoped to secure fair Amy Herbert to reign over them as mistress, appeared to afford him but dull anticipation now. ‘How shall I ever get through the work?’ he thought, ‘and my heavy heart and sluggish spirit will lay me open to the worst influences of the country. But I will not despair. My wants and my weakness are not unknown, and a way will be found for me even out of this “Slough of Despond.”’