My maid was sitting up for me. Twelve o’clock struck soon after I reached home, so you will guess we had not hurried. For the first time for many a long night I could not sleep. I lay thinking all the time of Captain Butler. I had fallen in love with him, and I wondered at myself. No man that I had ever before met had made the least impression upon me. I knew my own heart well down to this moment--I had never given men nor their love a thought. In what, then, lay the magic of this man? I was so much in love with him that, had he stayed at my door after Will Johnstone had gone away and asked me to be his sweetheart and marry him, I should have consented. I was distracted with vexation and delight. All night long I lay thinking of him, and if I slept in snatches it was but to dream of him, so that, whether I was awake or slept, he was present to me. I felt that I must find out, and quickly find out, if he had a sweetheart. If so, why then I had not yet let go of the reins; but I must make haste, or the bit would be hard in the teeth and I should be run away with. I thought of his suggestion to go a voyage with him, and pried close into it for an inner meaning; but the memory of his manner would not suffer me to find more than had met my ear. To fall in love in an hour, thought I! Well, it must run in the blood. Father fell in love with mother at first sight; that had been her fond memory--she had boasted of it in his life and after his death--till, to my grief and to the souring of the best sweetness that her heart held, she swallowed the mumping prescription whose plate was upon my door, and whose lamp glowed like a danger signal over the plate. CHAPTER V SHE VISITS THE ‘CHILDE HAROLD’ I rose early next morning, sent for the cook, and gave her certain instructions. The servants in our strangely ordered home were as much mine as my stepfather’s; I paid half their wages. But my own maid was at my own cost, and she waited upon me only. Captain Butler and my cousin arrived shortly after half-past twelve, and at one o’clock we sat down to as dainty and elegant a meal as I and the cook and my maid could contrive among us. We drank champagne; my father’s silver was upon the table; in the middle was a rich hothouse nosegay, which had cost me a guinea and a half. My maid, a discreet, good-looking girl, waited admirably. My cousin stared, and asked me, boy-like, if I dined thus every day. I laughed and answered: ‘Off as good dishes, Will, but never so well, because I often dine alone when I dine at home at all.’ ‘I should like to dine with you every day,’ said Will.