That was about three years ago.

I was crossing the North Sea (you remember the time; I said good-bye to you in the Academy, where your bust was), and on the boat I got into conversation with a decent kind of man who had his wife and family with him, going to settle for a time at Stockholm; a merchant of some sort.
There were three children, and they had a governess--Lilian, in fact, who was then not much more than eighteen.

I liked the look of her from the first.

She was very still and grave,--the kind of thing that takes me in a woman, provided she has good features.

I managed to get a word or two with her, and I liked her way of speaking.