He put her, with his own hands, into the shore-boat alongside.
In five minutes more the ship had gathered way; the boat was at the landing-stage--and the girls had seen the last of each other for many a long year to come.
This was in the summer of eighteen hundred and thirty-one.
II.
Twenty-four years later--in the summer of eighteen hundred and fifty-five--there was a villa at Hampstead to be let, furnished.
The house was still occupied by the persons who desired to let it.

On the evening on which this scene opens a lady and two gentlemen were seated at the dinner-table.

The lady had reached the mature age of forty-two.

She was still a rarely beautiful woman.

Her husband, some years younger than herself, faced her at the table, sitting silent and constrained, and never, even by accident, looking at his wife.