'Omitting the islands and the Mediterranean colour, it is. I have often told you how I love it. I have landed papa at the Club. Are you aware that we meet you at Steynham the day after to-morrow?' 'Well, we can ride on the downs. The downs between three and four of a summer's morning are as lovely as anything in the world. They have the softest outlines imaginable . . . and remind me of a friend's upper lip when she deigns to smile.' 'Is one to rise at that hour to behold the effect? And let me remind you further, Nevil, that the comparison of nature's minor work beside her mighty is an error, if you will be poetical.' She cited a well-known instance of degradation in verse. But a young man who happens to be intimately acquainted with a certain 'dark eye in woman' will not so lightly be brought to consider that the comparison of tempestuous night to the flashing of those eyes of hers topples the scene headlong from grandeur. And if Beauchamp remembered rightly, the scene was the Alps at night. He was prepared to contest Cecilia's judgement. At that moment the breeze freshened and the canvas lifted from due South the yacht swung her sails to drive toward the West, and Cecilia's face and hair came out golden in the sunlight. Speech was difficult, admiration natural, so he sat beside her, admiring in silence. She said a good word for the smartness of his little yacht. 'This is my first trial of her,' said Beauchamp. 'I hired her chiefly to give Dr. Shrapnel a taste of salt air. I 've no real right to be idling about. His ward Miss Denham is travelling in Switzerland; the dear old man is alone, and not quite so well as I should wish. Change of scene will do him good. I shall land him on the French coast for a couple of days, or take him down Channel.' Cecilia gazed abstractedly at a passing schooner. 'He works too hard,' said Beauchamp. 'Who does?' 'Dr. Shrapnel.' Some one else whom we have heard of works too hard, and it would be happy for mankind if he did not. Cecilia named the schooner; an American that had beaten our crack yachts. Beauchamp sprang up to spy at the American. 'That's the Corinne, is she!' Yankee craftiness on salt water always excited his respectful attention as a spectator. 'And what is the name of your boat, Nevil?' 'The fool of an owner calls her the Petrel. It's not that I'm superstitious, but to give a boat a name of bad augury to sailors appears to me . . . however, I 've argued it with him and I will have her called the Curlew. Carrying Dr. Shrapnel and me, Petrel would be thought the proper title for her isn't that your idea?'