Next day he talked to me as he had promised. I listened with love and interest, though I secretly thought it no more than a sort of hair-splitting on the part of society to insist that a girl should not receive her sweetheart alone in her own house. I was alone with Tom now. I had been alone with him at the Brunswick Hotel. What was the difference between my being alone in the streets with him and my being with him at my rooms at home? Yet he said there was a difference, and, of course, he was right. I listened to him deferentially, with my head hung. Had it been my aunt who uttered the opinions he delivered, I should have argued with her, flashed my most spirited looks upon her, flung from her, and, had it been possible, proved myself right by doing the very thing which she declared the world thought improper. Friends who had known me earlier would have believed that love had taken the spirit out of me; but the truth was in Tom I had found my master. We were constantly together. Scarcely a day passed whilst he was in London without our meeting. I made him sit to a painter of miniature portraits in Regent Street, and the same artist took my likeness for my sweetheart to carry away to sea with him. They were both beautiful little pictures. My eyes seemed to glow out of the ivory, and Tom’s face was to the life, happy, careless, loving. It was settled by this time that we were to be married on his return. He hoped that he might not have to go to sea again after next voyage. If he went, he would take me with him. The scheme provided for my being at his side, as his wife, in any case. But he owned that, though he had recommended a sea voyage to me, and though he had said he would take me as his wife to sea with him, he had far rather that I kept on dry ground. The sea was no place for woman. It was hurdled with perils. It was a ceaseless jump of risks from one port to another. Here, then, was one reason for our not being married until he returned.