Greville Hampton listened with a curiously mingled expression in his face--disdain of, and indignation at, Lord Oakhampton, when Derval related the episode at Bermuda; and then something of real gratification stole into his features on thinking that the peer's daughter should owe her life and existence to the skill and prowess of _his_ son! While, to anything in which Derval shone with credit, Mrs. Hampton listened coldly, with disdain nearly expressed in her light-coloured eyes, and had no word of womanly or well-bred approbation for the feat he had performed, and of which the only trophy he chose to show, was the signet ring of Lord Oakhampton, with the three choughs under a coronet, at which Greville gave an angry grimace, and sat slowly stroking a huge beard he had cultivated since Derval last saw him. "And so you like Captain Talbot and your ship, my boy?" said he, when Mrs. Hampton and her peculiar care had betaken them to the drawing-room, and to change the subject of the astounding alterations at Finglecombe, on which Derval had naturally been expatiating. "Like the Captain? He is a genuine brick!" said Derval; "and as for our ship, no better sails the sea!" "Fill your glass, Derval--that Burgundy is better than any we used to have long ago." "Thanks, Papa--'Governor,' I suppose I should call you in the parlance of the present day--even Rook, I perceive, has adopted it." "Bad form, I deem it--very." "Whatever I call you, you will ever be the same dear old man to me!" exclaimed Derval, as his eyes filled, and he wrung his father's hand. "But I should like you to see the _Amethyst_ under full sail before the wind, or even close hauled with her tacks aboard!" he added, with all a seaman's genuine enthusiasm in a really good craft. "She does indeed skim the waves, as if she were the work of magic. I have often watched her, as Scott describes the Mertouns watching Cleveland's vessel, as 'that rare masterpiece by which human genius aspires to surmount the waves and contend with the winds,' and you must know that we sailors think that a ship, like a woman, has a will of her own, yet knows what the helmsman wants of her; so right was he who said 'she walks the waters like a thing of life'--and this is precisely what the _Amethyst_ does. Buoyant as a duck, when before the wind, I have seen her yard-arms nearly touch the great rollers on each side alternately." So multifarious were his father's engagements, and so much was he pre-occupied by his schemes, that Derval soon found his own society could be spared, and one of his first acts was to visit the quaint old parsonage of the Tudor times, and present to Mr. Asperges Laud the grim natural curiosity he had for him--the head of a shark caught by Joe Grummet off Tristan d'Acunha, and which he had scraped and polished till he had rendered it, as he thought, a very high work of art indeed.