642 The Demon Ship. [DEC. 



I heard that my former friend I had nearly said enemy the Countess 

 of Falcondale, was on board, I felt half-inclined to relinquish the 

 voyage." Margaret hesitated then said, half-smiling, half-sad, " I 

 cannot autobiographize as my friend has done. But but perhaps you 

 heard of the unhappy state of my dear parent's affairs and his daughter 

 was prevailed on to take a step perhaps a false one. Well well, I 

 cannot tell my history. Peace be with the dead ! every filial, every 

 conjugal feeling consecrate their ashes ! But make yourself easy ; my 

 mother-in-law is not here. You will find but one dowager-countess in 

 this vessel, and she now shakes your hand, and bids you a good night." 



Margaret hastily disappeared as she spoke, and left me in a state 



But I will teaze no one with my half-dreamlike feelings on that night. 



Well, I failed not to visit my noble fellow-passenger on the morrow ; 

 and day after day, while we lay on those becalmed waves, I renewed 

 my intercourse with Margaret. It can easily be divined that she had 

 given her hand to save a parent, and that she had come abroad with a 

 husband, who, dying, had there left her a widow, and alas ! for me 

 a rich widow. If the limits of my little manuscript would allow, I could 

 tell a long tale of well-managed treachery and deception ; how the ill- 

 natured countess suffered me to remain in the belief that the death of 



Captain Cameron's niece, which occurred at A , shortly after my 



departure, was that of my own Margaret; how, in her character of 

 supreme manager of the paralytic officer's affairs, she kept my letters for 

 her own exclusive eye ; how she worked on Margaret's feelings to bring 

 about a marriage with the Earl of Falcondale, in the hope of again 

 acquiring a maternal footing in her son's house, and the right of manag- 

 ing a portionless and now broken-spirited daughter-in-law ; how Mar- 

 garet held out stoutly until informed of my broken faith ; and how her 

 marriage was kept from the public papers. For the countess, although 

 I feel assured that there was a something inexpressibly soothing in her 

 feelings in thus over-reaching and punishing one who had so often mor- 

 tified her self-importance, yet I do believe that the love of concealment, 

 and management, and plotting, and bringing things about by her own 

 exclusive agency, was, after all, the primum mobile in this affair. She 

 had too little feeling herself even to conceive the pang she was inflicting 

 on me, and she doubtless considered herself the supreme benefactress of 

 Margaret. 



As my intimacy with Margaret increased, I reflected with additional 

 pain on her marriage. In the first place, I could not bear to think of 

 her having belonged to another ; and, in the second, I felt that her rank 

 and wealth might give to my addresses an air of self-interest which I 

 felt they did not deserve. I dreaded the end of my voyage as much as 

 I had at first desired it, and almost wished that we could sail for ever over 

 those still, blue seas. Alas ! it was not long ere I would have given all 

 I held in life that Margaret and I had never met on those waves ere 

 I would have sacrificed all our late sweet intercourse, to have known 

 that she was safe in her narrow house of turf by the lowly church of 



A , and her soul in shelter from the horrors it was doomed to 



suffer. 



One night, after we had been standing for some time, contemplating 

 the unrivalled blue of a southern summer sky, I thought, as I bade the 

 Countess a good night, that I perceived a light breeze arising. This I 

 remarked to her, and she received the observation with a pleasure which 





