altogether pleasant in the circumstances. "Of course, no sooner had I caught sight of Sir Charles Hyde than I looked for his daughter, and at last saw someone talking to a young lady seated near the after-gratings, with her head turned round seaward, whom it didn't require much guessing for me to name. Not having seen her at all since the affair of the boats, I strolled aft, when I was rather surprised to find that her companion was Tom Westwood, and they seemed in the thick of an interesting discourse. The instant I got near, however, they broke it off; the young lady turned her head--and never, I'd swear, was woman's face seen fairer than I thought hers at that moment--when the bright moonlight, that had seemed trying to steal round her loose bonnet and peep in, fell straight down at once from her forehead to her chin, appearing, as it were, to dance in under her long eyelashes to meet her eyes: while one fall of her brown hair hung bright in it, glistening against the shadow round her cheek, that drew the charming line of her nose and lip as clear as the horizon on the sky! The very moment, in fact, that a bitter thought flashed into my mind, for to my fancy she looked vexed at seeing me, and a colour seemed mounting up to her cheek, even through the fairy sort of glimmer on it. _Could_ Tom Westwood have been acting no more than the clerical near such a creature? and if a fellow like him took it in his head, what chance had _I_? The next minute, accordingly, she rose off her seat, and gave me a slight bow in answer to mine, and walked direct to the gallery stair, where she disappeared.