"No Gerald," she replied calmly, "I am merely supposing a case. Could you find no excuse for a man acting under a sense of so much injury?--would you still call him an assassin, if, with such provocation, he sought to destroy the hated life of one who had thus injured him?" Gerald paused, apparently bewildered. "Tell me, dearest Gerald," and her fair and beautiful hand caught and pressed his--"would you still bestow upon one so injured the degrading epithet of assassin?" "Assassin!--most undoubtedly I would. But why this question, Matilda?" The features of the American assumed a changed expression; she dropped the hand she bad taken the instant before, and said, disappointedly: "I find, then, my philosophy is totally at fault." "Wherein, Matilda?" anxiously asked Gerald. "In this, that I have not been able to make you a convert to my opinions." "And these are--?" again questioned Gerald, his every pulse throbbing with intense emotion. "Not to pronounce too harshly on the conduct of others, seeing that we ourselves may stand in much need of lenity of judgment. There might have existed motives for the action of him whom you designate as an assassin, quite as powerful as those which led to YOUR interference, and quite as easily justified to himself." "But, dearest Matilda--" "Nay, I have done--I close at once my argument and my philosophy. The humour is past, and I shall no longer attempt to make the worse appear the better cause. I dare say you thought me in earnest," she added, with slight sarcasm, "but a philosophical disquisition between two lovers on the eve of parting for ever, was too novel and piquant a seduction to be resisted." That "parting for ever" was sufficient to drive all philosophy utterly away from our hero. "For ever, did you say, Matilda?--no, not for ever; yet, how coldly do you allude to a separation, which, although I trust it will be only temporary, is to me a source of the deepest vexation. You did not manifest this indifference in the early part of our conversation this evening." "And if there be a change," emphatically yet tenderly returned the beautiful American; "am _I_ the only one changed. Is your manner NOW what it was THEN. Do you already forget at WHAT a moment that conversation was interrupted?" Gerald did not forget; and again, as they leaned over the vessel's side, his arm was passed around the waist of his companion. The hour, the scene, the very rippling of the water-- all contributed to lend a character of excitement to the feelings of the youth. Filled with tenderness and admiration for the fascinating being who reposed thus confidingly on his shoulder, he scarcely dared to move, lest in so doing he should destroy the fabric of his happiness. "First watch there, hilloa! rouse up, and be d--d to you, it's two o'clock." Both Gerald and Matilda, although long and silently watching the progress of the vessel, had forgotten there was any such being as a steersman to direct her.