"Ask me no questions, Rosamond, for I can answer none. Believe me when I tell you that you have no share in the change that has come upon me. My feelings towards you remain unaltered; but within the last few weeks I have made a discovery which has struck a death-blow to my happiness. I go out once more a homeless wanderer, because the quiet of domestic life has become unbearable to me. I want bustle, danger, hard work. I want to get away from my own thoughts." Rosamond in vain implored her husband to tell her more than this. He, so yielding of old, was on this point inflexible. Before the leaves had begun to fall in the dreary autumn days the "Albatross" was ready for a new voyage. The first mate took her down to Plymouth Harbour, there to wait the coming of her captain, who travelled into Devonshire by mail-coach, taking Rosamond to her future abode. At any other time Rosamond would have been delighted with the romantic beauty of that Devonian village, where her husband had selected a pleasant cottage for her, near his aunt's abode; but a settled melancholy had taken possession of the once joyous girl. She had brooded continually over her husband's altered conduct, and she had at last arrived at a terrible conclusion. She believed that he was mad. What but sudden insanity could have produced so great a change?--a change for which it was impossible to imagine a cause. "If he had been absent from me for some time, and had returned an altered creature, I should not be so much bewildered by the change," Rosamond said to herself. "But the transformation occurred in an hour. He saw no strange visitor; he received no letter. No tidings of any kind could possibly have reached him. He entered my father's sitting-room a light-hearted, happy man; he came out of it gloomy and miserable. Can I doubt that the change is something more than any ordinary alteration of feeling or character?" Poor Rosamond remembered having heard of the fatal effects of sunstrokes--effects which have sometimes revealed themselves long after the occurrence of the calamity that caused them; and she told herself that the change in George Jernam's nature must needs be the result of such a calamity. She entreated her husband to consult an eminent physician as to the state of his health; but she dared not press her request, so coldly was it received. "Who told you that I was ill?" he asked; "I am not ill. All the physicians in Christendom could do nothing for me." After this, Rosamond could say no more. For worlds she would not have revealed to a stranger her sad suspicion of George Jernam's insanity. She could only pray that Providence would protect and guide him in his roving life.