After they had dined Bessie was left to her memories and musings, while
the gentlemen went pacing up and down the deck in earnest conversation.
It was a perfect evening. The sky was full of color, scarlet, rosy,
violet, primrose--changing, fading, flushing, perpetually. And before
all was gray the moon had risen and was shining in silver floods upon
the sea. In the mystery of moonshine Bessie lost sight of the phantom
poplars that fringe the Orne. The excitement of novelty and uncertainty
routed dull thoughts, and her fancy pruned its wings for a flight into
the future. In the twilight came Mrs. Betts, and cut short the flight of
fancy with prosy suggestions of early retirement to rest. It was easy to
retire, but not so easy to sleep. Bessie's mind was astir. It became
retrospective. She went over the terrors of her first coming to Caen,
the dinner at Thunby's, and the weird talk of Janey Fricker in the
_dortoir_, till melancholy overwhelmed her.

Where was Janey? Was she still sailing with her father? No news of her
had ever come to the Rue St. Jean since the day she left it. It
sometimes crossed Bessie's mind that Janey was no longer in the land of
the living. At last, with the lulling, soft motion of a breezeless night
on the water, came oblivion and sleep too sound for dreams.




CHAPTER XIV.

_ON BOARD THE FOAM._


Life is continuous, so we say, but here and there events happen that