"That your poor Louisa loves you still—loves you dearly, Newton; and ere you go to-night you must give me a lock of your hair." Her head on my shoulder; her pale brow against my cheek, her lips were close to mine. "Till we are both in our graves, dear Newton, you can never, never know how much I love you, and the agony that Berkeley’s cunning cost me." These were blessed words to hear—blessed words to treasure in the distant land to which I was going; and in a silence more eloquent than words, I could but press her to my heart. This was indeed a moment of reunion, never to be forgotten, but to be treasured in the secret recesses of the soul, and recalled only at times; and times there were when I recalled it, when far, far away, in the lonely watches of those dark nights, when the chafing of the Black Sea was heard afar off on the rocks of Fort Constantine, and the thunder of Sebastopol was close and nigh; and then the vague, undefined memory of the place, the time, her voice, her eyes, and her kiss, would come gradually back, filling my heart with intense melancholy, and my eyes with tears. In my doubt of the future, in my fear of ensnarements, and the exercise of parental authority (a power of which we stand in such awe in Scotland), and lest, by an unforeseen chance or circumstance, I should lose her, I actually besought her, in what terms it is impossible to remember now, to consent to a private marriage; and strange ideas of written promises and protestations, of blood mingled with wine, and many other melodramatic absurdities, occurred to me. "Ah, no, no," said she, rousing herself to the occasion. "There will be time enough when you return." "If I ever do return," said I, impetuously, thinking of the chances of war, and my certain hostile meeting with Berkeley. "You must return, dear Newton—you shall, and I feel it in my heart." "And there will be time——" "For me," she interrupted, "to be cried, as Lydia Languish says, ’three times in a parish church’, and have an enormously fat parish clerk ask the consent of every butcher in the parish to join in lawful wedlock Newton Calderwood Norcliff, bachelor, and Louisa Loftus, spinster; unless we have a special licence, St. George’s, Hanover Square, and the Bishop of London in his lawn sleeves, and so forth." This sudden change of manner at such a time startled and distressed me. "It is her way—a mistaken lightness of manner," thought I. But, alas! I was yet to learn some terrible lessons in the treachery of the human heart! Another brief and mute embrace, and we had just time to veil our mutual agitation and turn our attention to the outspread map of the Mediterranean, affecting to trace the distance from Cagliari to Malta, when we heard the voice of Lord Chillingham saying to Sir Nigel— "Here they are, reviving their geography apparently. Captain Norcliff," he added, "here is a note for you which has just been brought by an orderly dragoon."