He held out his hand. The young man did not know what to say—there was so much to say! He could only make offer of some further little hospitalities, which Mr. Bethune declined; then the steward was summoned, to put out the lamps and make other preparations, so that the _White Rose_ should fold its petals together, for the slumber of the night. And presently a profound peace reigned from stem to stern; and the last plashing of the oars outside had died away. But it was not to sleep that Vincent devoted the early hours of this night and morning. His mind was tossed this way and that by all kinds of moods and projects, the former piteous and the latter wildly impracticable. He had never before fully realised how curiously solitary was the lot of these two wanderers, how strange was their isolation, how uncertain was their future. And while the old man’s courage and bold front provoked his admiration, he could not help looking at the other side of the shield: what was to become of her, when her only protector was taken from her? He knew that they were none too well off, those two; and what would she do when left alone? But if on the very next day he were to go to Mrs. Ellison and borrow £10,000 from her, which he would have mysteriously conveyed to old George Bethune? He could repay the money, partly by the sacrifice of his own small fortune, and partly by the assigning over of the paternal allowance; while he could go away to Birmingham, or Sheffield, or wherever the place was, and earn his living by becoming Mr. Ogden’s private secretary. They need never know from whom this bounty came, and it would render them secure from all the assaults of fortune. Away up there in the Black Country he would think of them; and it would lighten the wearisome toil of the desk if he could imagine that Maisrie Bethune had left the roar and squalor of London, and was perhaps wandering through these very Thames-side meadows, or floating in some white-garnitured boat, under the shade of the willows. There would be rest for the pilgrims at last, after their world-buffetings. And so he lay and dreamed and pitied and planned, until in the window of the small state-room there appeared the first blue-gray of the dawn, about which time he finally fell asleep.