Their landing was, therefore, effected with ease and safety, and Lucy could not help acknowledging to her own heart, that she was relieved and rejoiced, even more than she had expected, on finding her foot once more upon the firm land. "Now you know your way to Alcombe, Master Hailes," said one of the men in the boat, "you can't well miss it." Hailes only replied by an "ay! ay!" and the boat pushed off again as fast as possible toward the ship. CHAPTER XXII. True love is an unselfish passion; or, at all events--if the painful doctrine of some philosophers be correct, and there be no affection of the human mind without its share of selfishness--true love partakes thereof as little or less than any other passion, and that share of selfishness which it does admit, is of the noblest and most refined kind. Yet we are inclined to believe that it is without selfishness; for we cannot understand such a thing as being selfish by proxy. It is, in fact, a contradiction in terms; and when we love another so well as to be willing, ready, desirous of sacrificing our convenience, our comfort, our safety, our happiness, ourselves for them, we may admit the doctrine, that it gives us greater satisfaction to do so than not, without admitting that we are selfish in so feeling. It was about four o'clock in the morning, and Charles Tyrrell sat with Lucy under the shelter of a projecting piece of rock, halfway up the face of one of those cliffs which are common upon that coast, not very difficult of ascent or descent, though enormously high, and presenting perpendicular faces of rock in many parts. They are broken, at various parts, by green flat slopes, by occasional trees and bushes, and by steps or paths of sufficient breadth to enable two, if not three people, to walk abreast. The road which Hailes was to have taken toward the little village, called Alcombe, passed up one of these paths, along the face of the cliff. He had followed it, more than once, in former years, and had imagined that he remembered it still; but such had not been the case; and, after going on for some time, the whole party found that they were decidedly astray.