Nothing that need make a part of this story happened that night. Wilfrid was reserved, but his behaviour and the little he said were collected enough to make one wonder at the lengths he would occasionally go the other way. He brought a large diary from his cabin, and sat writing in it up to a short while before going to bed. I cannot imagine what he had to put down, unless, indeed, he were posting up the book from some old date. It found him occupation, however, and he was a good deal in labour too throughout, I thought, often biting the feather of his pen, casting his eyes up, plunging his fingers into his hair and frowning upon the page, and comporting himself, in a word, as though he were composing an epic poem. I played at beggar-my-neighbour with Miss Jennings, showed her some tricks at cards, and she told my fortune. She said she could read my future by looking at my hand, and I feel the clasp of her fingers still, and smell the perfume of her hair and behold the brightness of it, and see her poring upon my palm, talking low that Wilfrid should not be disturbed, tracing the lines with a rosy finger-nail with an occasional lift of her eyes to mine, the violet of them dark as hazel and brilliant in the oil flames--it might have happened an hour ago, so keen is this particular memory. It was as peaceful an ocean night as any man could imagine of the weather up in the seas which our yacht was still stemming; moonless, for the planet rose late now, but spacious and radiant with stars. There was the phantasm of a craft when I went on deck about a mile on the bow of us, in the spangled dusk looking like ice, so fine and delicate was the white of her canvas; but no notice was taken of her. Finn trudged over to the gloom to leeward when I rose up through the hatch, possibly mistaking me for my cousin, and manifestly anxious to shirk the job of having anything to do with the stranger. I watched her pass--a mere wraith of a ship she looked, sliding her three stately spires that seemed to melt upon the eye as you watched them under the red tremble and green and diamond-like sparkling of the luminaries which looked down upon her. By the time she had faded out like a little puff of steam in the dumb shadow astern, my pipe was smoked out, and I went below and to bed, scarce having exchanged three words with Finn, and musing much on my fortune that Miss Laura had read in my hand--that my ‘line of life’ was very long, that in middle life I should meet with a woman who would fascinate me, but that, nevertheless, I should die as I had lived, a bachelor. Next morning Wilfrid did not appear at the breakfast-table. Muffin informed me that his master had passed a very bad night, had not closed his eyes, indeed, and for hour after hour had paced the cabin, sometimes going on deck. ‘Is he ill, do you think?’ I inquired.