“And now comes the great vain question:  What does everybody say?  Oh, if I could only disembody myself; fly back to London for a few hours; and listen invisibly to society talking about me.  I know this is mean:  but one must fill up life with some mean curiosities.  So please tell me what kind of sensation I have caused.  Just the usual one.  I suppose.  Half the people never would have thought it; and the other half knew all along what it would come to.  Well, I do not care much about the world in general; but I cannot quiet my conscience on the subject of my father and George.  It must be very hard on papa that, after being disappointed in my marriage and having suffered long ago from what my mother did, he should now be disgraced by his daughter.  For disgraced, alas! is the word.  I am afraid poor George’s prospects must be spoiled by the scandal, which, I know well, must be terrible.  I thought my first duty was to leave Ned free, and to free myself, at all hazards; and so I did not dwell on the feelings and interests of others as much as I perhaps ought to have done.  There is one point about which I am especially anxious.  It never occurred to me before I went that people might say that my going was Ned’s fault, and that he had treated me badly.  You must contradict this with all your might and main if you hear it even hinted at.

“There is no use in putting off the confession any longer, Nelly:  I have made an utter fool of myself. I wish I were back with Ned again.  There! what do you think of that?  Now for another great confession, and a most humiliating one.  Sholto is a—­I dont know what epithet is fair.  I suppose I have no right to call him an impostor merely because we were foolish enough to overrate him.  But I can hardly believe now that we ever really thought that there were great qualities and powers latent beneath his proud reserve.  Ned, I know, never believed in Sholto; and I, in my infinite wisdom, set that down to his not understanding him.  Ned was right, as usual.  If you want to see how selfish people are, and how skin-deep fashionable politeness is, take a voyage.  Go with a picked company of the nice people you have met for an hour or so at a dinner or an at-home; and see how different they will appear when they have been cooped up in a ship with you day and night for a week.  An ocean steamer is the next worst thing to the Palace of Truth.  Poor Sholto did not stand the ordeal.  He was ridiculously distant in his manner to the rest of the passengers, and in little matters at table and so forth he was really just as selfish as he could be.  He was impatient because I was ill the first two days, and afterwards he seemed to think that I ought not to speak to anyone but himself.  The doctor, who was very attentive to me, was his particular aversion; and it was on his account that we had our first quarrel, the upshot of which was a scene between them, which I overheard.  One very fine day, when all the passengers were on deck, Sholto met the doctor