We go to freeze in the country, a place
with distant hills of blue ice, my old nurse told me,--old Ursule. Oh,
Sir, she was drowned! I saw the very wave that swept her off!"
"That was your servant?"
"Yes."
"Then, perhaps, I have some good news for you. She was tall and large?"
"_Oui_."
"Her name was Ursule?"
"_Oui! je dis que oui!_"
Mr. Raleigh laughed at her eagerness. "She is below, then," he
said,--"not drowned. There is Reynolds. Mr. Reynolds, will you take this
young lady to her servant, Ursule, the woman you rescued?"
And Mademoiselle Le Blanc disappeared under that gentleman's escort.
The ordinary restraints of social life not obtaining so much on board
ship as elsewhere, Mr. Raleigh saw his acquaintance with the pale young
stranger fast ripening into friendliness. It was an agreeable variation
from the monotonous routine of his voyage, and he felt that it was not
unpleasant to her. Indeed, with that childlike simplicity that was her
first characteristic, she never saw him without seeking him, and every
morning and every evening it became their habit to pace the deck
together. Sunrise and twilight began to be the hours with which he
associated her; and it was strange, that, coming, as she did, out of the
full blaze of tropical suns, she yet seemed a creature that had taken
life from the fresh, cool, dewy hours, and that must fairly dissolve
beneath the sky of noon.
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