Dr. Durand looked serious at the sight of my woful aspect, and Marion mutely proffered her _vinaigrette_, gratefully accepted, as was the good doctor's compassionate silence; but, as usual, Favraud, after having once gotten fairly under weigh, ran on. "What is the use of bewailing the inevitable?" he pursued. "We have all seen your _penchant_ for Curzon, and his for you, for three days past; but Octavia is as tough as _lignum-vitae_, I regret to assure you, my dear Miss Harz, and your chance is _as blue_ as your spirits, or the flames of snap-dragon, or Marion's eyes. You will have to just put up with the captain, I fear, for even the doctor there is in harness for life. Southern women, you know, proverbially survive their husbands; and, as the suttee is out of fashion, they sometimes have to marry Yankees as a _dernier ressort_ of desperation! Of course, there are occasional sad exceptions"--looking grave for a moment, and glancing at the black hat-band on the Panama hat he was nursing on his knees, so as to let the breeze blow through his silky, silver-streaked black hair--"but--but--in short, why will you all look so doleful? Isn't it bad enough to feel so?" "The loveliest fade earliest, we all know," and the tears were in his honest, frivolous eyes, dashed away in the next moment as he exclaimed, eagerly, "Why, there goes the Lamarque equipage, as I live! I had forgotten all about it. The pleasantest woman in Savannah, young or old, is to be your _compagnon de voyage_, Miss Harz, and the most determined widower on record her escort; a perfect John Rogers of a man, with nine little motherless children, her brother Raguet ('Rag,' as we called him at school, on account of his prim stiffness, so that 'limber as a rag' seemed a most preposterous saying in his vicinity). He is handsome, however, and intelligent, a perfect gentleman, but on the mourners' bench just now, like some others you know of"--heaving a deep sigh. "His wife, poor thing, died last autumn--a pretty girl in her day was Cornelia Huger! I was a little weak in that direction once myself--before--that is, before--O doctor! what a trouble it is to remember!" And again the small, fleet hand was dashed across the twinkling, tearful eyes of this April day of a middle-aged man of the world--this modern Mercutio--merry and mournful at once, as if there were two sides to his every mood, like the famous shield of story. When we reached the quay the Kosciusko was already getting up her steam, and, in less than an hour afterward, the friends I loved were gone like dreams, the bustle of departure was over, and, with lifted canvas and a puffing engine, we were grandly steaming past the noble forts (poor Bertie's broach and buckle, be it remembered) on our path of pride and power toward the broad Atlantic.