But all this self-parleying simply signified that I was waiting to make sure of her answer before addressing her. In one quarter of an hour one fine night, with a high moon riding over the topsail yardarm and the breeze bringing an elfin-like sound of delicate singing, out of the rigging, it was settled! A glance from her, a moment of speaking silence, brought my love to my lips, and standing with her hand in mine in the shadow of a wing of sail curving past the main-rigging, with the brook-like voice of running waters rising, I asked her to be my wife. There was hesitation without reluctance, a manner of mingled doubt and delight. I had won her heart; and her hand must follow; but her mother, her dearest mother! Her consent must be obtained; and from what she said in disjointed sentences, with earnest anxiety to say nothing that might give me pain, with a voice that trembled with the emotions of gratitude and affection, I gathered that Lady Temple’s matrimonial schemes for her daughter soared very considerably above the degree of a commoner. ‘But Louise, I have your love?’ ‘Yes, yes, yes! my love, my gratitude, and my admiration.’ ‘And you need but your mother’s consent to marry me?’ ‘Yes, and she will consent. This long association—this astonishing adventure’—— ‘Ay, but there is no obligation of marriage in _that_. I have your love, and your mother will consent because you love me?’ She fixed her eyes on my face, and by the haze of moonlight floating off the sand-white planks into the shadow in which we stood, I saw such meaning in them that the sole sequel of my interpretation of it must be to put my lips to hers. ‘My first kiss, Louise! My God! how little did I dream of this happiness when I used to look at you and almost hate you aboard the _Countess Ida_!’ But enough of this. It all happened so many years ago now, that I am astonished by my memory that enables me to put down even so much of this little passage of my experiences with Louise as I have written.