Will saw no more of Rusidda in private that night, though she was in pretty constant conversation with him. And her whole nature seemed to have suffered some subtle change, but so deep that even he in time found himself transferring his attention to My Lady, and almost fascinated with the wonderful mastery over hearts, woman's as well as man's, which she possessed when she chose to exert her powers of fascination. She must in truth have been the most engaging woman who ever lived. Her sympathy was so flexible, and at the same time I might almost say audacious, and she added to it such a royal generosity of feeling, such a perfect command over her charm of personality. There is a serpent in the East, which the Admiral had seen in his Indian days, and described to us. This creature has a kind of hood of skin, which it can erect at pleasure. My Lady had a power of enhancing the effect of her beauty which was as extraordinary. I think the power of her sympathy was due to the vividness of her imagination. She could put herself in any man's place, and build his castles in the air. Added to all this, she had a great passion for being admired and being loved. When I say loved, I mean deep liking and affection, not grosser love. That she wished to inspire a passion of affection I am sure; that she cared for the love, in the sense we often use the word, of any man except Mr. Greville and the Admiral, I do not believe, for I know how indignantly she resisted the advances of the Prince Regent, to whom a few years later Sir William, with unutterable baseness, did his best to bring her. It struck me often that this kind of love did not exist between the Hamiltons, but that she was deeply affectionate to Sir William. Well, to cut a long story short, we lay kicking about the Bay, kicking about on the ripple of the north-east breeze, for three days and two nights, waiting for the word to weigh. I could not, except in the light of future events, say that we were wasting time, for I believe that in it we received into the fleet every person who had both the will and the power to fly. And the Portuguese, under our Admiral's eye, bestirred themselves in making ready the unfitted Neapolitan ships. But in the two days that followed we often bitterly regretted the delay, for hardly were we outside the jaws which the Island of Capri makes with the horns of the Bay, when there arose the great storm of which the Admiral wrote, "It blew harder than I ever experienced since I have been at sea," and the wind had chopped round to the sou'-west.