"Good heavens, is that possible? If I go but a little way on the sea, the least little way, I suffer tortures, veritable agonies. And you others, you English, do not seem to suffer at all. You are a kind of sea-dogs, to whom waves and tempest are a natural element." "I was brought up near the coast," answered Hilda. "I have been out in all weathers." And then she thought of that wild, rock-bound coast on which she and Bothwell were to have lived, they two, all in all to each other, ineffably happy amidst simplest surroundings. She thought of the boat they were to have had--the cockle-shell rowboat in which they were to have gone dancing over the waves from Tintagel to Boscastle, or by Trebarwith sands, shining golden in the sunlight--in a bright world of life and clamour, the bird-world of gulls and cormorants, a winged populace, rejoicing in sea-foam, and light, and the music of the winds. She thought of the life that was to have been--the fairy fabric of the future, which had seemed so beautiful and so real, and which her ruthless hand had shattered. Had she done right in so surrendering that fair future? Yes, again and again yes. The level domestic life which would have been so sweet to her as a woman would have been stagnation, a slow decay for an ambitious man. Her simple rustic rearing had prepared her for such a life. The monotony of a village existence was all-sufficient for her narrower views, her more concentrated nature. But Bothwell had seen the world, had lived in the thick of the strife; and it was most unnatural that he should resign all ambition, and live from day to day, working for his daily bread, like a labourer in the fields. He was to do this for her sake, his sole reward her love. It would have been, indeed, a one-sided bargain. Hilda heard the light, airy talk around her--the talk about art and music and theatres, about the great world and its scandals--as in a dream. It was a world of which she knew nothing; and the conversation around her seemed as if it had been carried on in a kind of verbal hieroglyphics. The French she heard to-night was a new language--made up of catchwords and slang phrases--lines from new plays, words twisted into new meanings--in a word, the language of the Palais Royal Theatre, and the _Vie Parisienne_. Hilda listened and wondered, most of all when Mdlle. Duprez, that most classical and academical of speakers, showed herself perfectly at home in this little language of Bohemian Paris.