Now this I could understand; but when I heard of other things--of the flirtation, for instance, between him and handsome Vivien Leigh, who, it was reported, had thrown off a former lover for his sake, of days and nights when no one, not even his mother, knew where he was--eclipses from which he would emerge with a white face and sunken eyes that made his friends shake their heads dolefully over him; of some of his doings at Surbiton, and in particular the magnificent river fête that he gave just before he left for India, and the fame of which lingers in the neighbourhood to this day--then, I confess, I was surprised, beginning at last to wonder if _my_ Thomas Gregory did really exist, as if he was not only a dream of my imagination. Various other reports, dealing mostly with his life in India, some of them curiously minute, had fallen under my notice; but they did not seem quite to fit in one with the other. Then came the difficulty of selection. I had formed my own conception of his character--a conception seriously shaken already by what I had heard of him in Surbiton. Would not my selection, if I tried to choose amongst the materials offered to me, be coloured both by the conception I had previously formed and by the shock it had sustained, so that the image produced would be distorted, and, in no sense, answering to reality? I was in this state of perplexity--on the point indeed of giving up the task of tracing the fortunes of the rajah's heir, when, by the mediation of a friend, who was anxious that the curious story should not be lost, a diary, kept spasmodically by Tom himself for some years, was placed in my hands, with liberty, under certain restrictions, to use it according to my own judgment. It has been of inestimable service to me, not only in filling up blanks that would otherwise have remained vacant, but also as giving such a mental image of the man himself as no one but himself could draw. It is partly with a view of presenting the first outlines as it were of this picture--partly because they form a good introduction to the stirring events of his Indian life, that I have decided to give, almost as they stand, the daily jottings in Tom's diary during his first voyage to India. * * * * * S.S. 'Patagonia,' _September_, 1856.--I will do as I have been advised. I will write down my experiences, and some of the strange thoughts and contradictory impulses that are constantly with me. It is possible that in this way my purposes and aims may become more distinct to myself. I don't think there could be a better moment than this for beginning my record. In the little state-room which for the next few weeks is to be my home there is a perfect quietness. I can hear the movement of feet up above, and the throbbing of the engines as they beat the water, but there is nothing else. After the excitement of the last few days it seems like a blessed lull--a pause in my life.