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Elizabeth had no conflict of ideas at this time,
For her this eight thousand dollars had but one use, —
flight from her fate; one meaning, — freedom. She
felt as if Heaven itself had dropped this unexpected
bounty into her lap. This was what she had been
praying for. At last, in this great world of chances
and changes, something had happened even to her.
Now she could break her chains, elude her keeper.

The eleventh day of December, she stood on the
deck of a steamer, outward bound for Havre. All her
arrangements had been completed with a tact and
secrecy and worldly wisdom which surprised herself.
Not even Mrs. Murray's vigilance or Jones's curiosity
had suspected her. Her outfit, the deep mourning of
a widow, had been made at a University Place dress-maker's,
whom she had never patronized before. She
took off her diamond ring, and laid it in her jewelcasket.
She locked drawers and wardrobes, and put
the keys in an envelope, which she sealed and directed
to her husband, leaving it in his desk. She left with
it no word of farewell. She was utterly indifferent as
to what he thought. She believed that he had no
heart to be wounded. She credited him with no unselfish
anxiety for her safety. As for his pride, he

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must nurse and solace that as he could. She felt free
of him when once that great, glittering diamond eye
was off her finger. She would take nothing of his,
nothing except the plain gold wedding-ring, which
was to corroborate her widow's weeds. Even the
simple walking-dress which she wore to University
Place, when she went to put on her mourning, was
purchased with her own money. She left the house on
foot, as if to take an ordinary walk; and that night
dinner waited for her in vain at Madison Square, and
she ate hers between blue water and blue sky.

Her name was registered in the list of passengers as
Mrs. E. Nugent. As Nugent was both the name of her
mother and her own middle name, she felt that she had
a certain right to this designation, and was not exactly
sailing under false colors.

The passage occupied thirteen days, and during that
time she had ample leisure to arrange her plans for
the future. The interest of her small fortune would
be but a meagre support, she knew, even in Paris,
where she had heard that the expenses of living were
much less than in New York. Still, if a pittance, it
was at least something fixed and certain, and she could
live on it, if compelled by necessity. In the eager joy
with which in those days she contemplated her freedom,
she thought no life apart from her husband,
whatever its privations, could be so comfortless or
so barren that she would not infinitely prefer it to the
fate she had left behind her. Still she believed herself
to have resources. She had some knowledge of French,

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— the imperfect knowledge a studious girl can acquire
from such teachers as a country place affords. Her
accent was bad, she knew; her grammar at fault; her
ignorance conspicuous in every sentence she tried to
frame. But these things would mend daily. Meantime,
her French could not be much worse than the English
of most of the language-masters whom she had been in
the habit of seeing; and she thought her inaccuracies
and inelegancies need not prevent her from seeking
and probably finding employment as an English teacher
in Paris. She had begun to acquire confidence in her
own executive ability, which had stood her in such
good stead in the last few days.

She withdrew herself during the voyage, almost
entirely, from the rest of the passengers, as her deep
mourning gave her an excellent excuse for doing; but
more than one had noticed with an interest kinder
than mere curiosity the young, delicate-looking woman,
with her sad, sweet face, who knew no one, and whom
on one knew.

“We shall see Havre to-morrow,” the captain said,
going up to her, as she sat on deck looking over the
railing into the lapsing waters, alone as usual.

Captain Ellis was a man in his fifties, — such a man
as the sea makes of material good in the first place, —
cool-brained, quick-witted, clear-headed, large of heart,
strong of muscle; above all, with no shams about
him; entirely true, and entirely in earnest.

From the commencement of the voyage, Elizabeth's
face had interested him, and her loneliness appealed to

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his sympathy. She might have been a daughter of
his own, as far as years went; and this man, who was
only the father of sons, felt for her a curious tenderness,
though they had scarcely exchanged a dozen sentences.
He could not bear to let her slip away from him like
the waves in the wake of his vessel, and leave no
mark. At least he must know whether she was going
to a safe harbor.

I have spoken before of the singular charm of Elizabeth's
voice. Captain Ellis felt it in the few words
which answered him. Nothing in her manner, however,
invited him to prolong the conversation; still,
secure of his own good intentions, he determined to
seem curious and officious in her eyes, rather than
miss any possible chance of serving her. He stood
beside her silently for a few moments, then he asked,
apropos of nothing, as it appeared, — “Did you ever
fancy that gray hairs might be an advantage, Mrs.
Nugent?”

She gave, at the sound of the name by which she
had been so seldom called, a slight start which did not
escape his notice; but her voice was very quiet, as she
said, — “I suppose every one longs for them, or for
what they signify, who is tired of life. Any sign that
one is nearing the end must be welcome.”

“But I am not tired of life, Mrs. Nugent, or in any
present hurry to get to any better place than Havre.
I have found life a good thing. My days have been
good days, and I am in no haste to end them. I like
the salt, free wind, the wide sea, the watching sky;

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and I will hold on to life while I may, always ready,
please God, to die bravely when I must. Still I find
an advantage in gray hairs, notwithstanding. But for
them, and the fact that I am quite old enough to
be your father, I should not venture to ask you, as
I am going to, whether I can be of any assistance to
you after you leave the ship. I suppose you will go on
to Paris; and if you have no friends to meet you at
Havre, perhaps there will be some way in which I can
serve you.”

Elizabeth looked up to him, a sudden rush of tears
swimming in her dark eyes, her old, eager impulsiveness
glowing on her changeful face.

“No one will meet me anywhere. I am all alone in
the world, — running away from my destiny; but it
seems to me God must have brought me so far, and
perhaps He will help me on.”

For a few moments Captain Ellis did not speak.
Then he said very gravely and very tenderly, — “Tell
me as much or as little as you like. But let me help
you if I can. I have a wife at home, who is as good a
woman as ever God made; and I had one daughter,
who died before she had spoken a word except my
name. If she had lived, she might have been about
your age, now. I think I would not have let her take
her life in her hand, as you have done; but I would
have blessed any man who showed her kindness. For
her sake, and her mother's sake, I would like to be
kind to you.”

“My father and my mother are in Heaven,” Elizabeth

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said, in a low voice, “and I had no one who cared for me
very much. I cannot tell you my story; but I have
done nothing which would have been unworthy of
your daughter had she grown up to womanhood.
If you will believe me, and help me, without knowing
any more, I will indeed be thankful, for I am friendless.
No soul in France has ever heard of me; but I think
I shall do very well there, if I can manage the first
steps. I have money enough to keep myself from
absolute want, and my plan is to add to my income by
teaching English.”

Captain Ellis considered for a few moments before he
said, — “I was trying to think whether I could get
away from the ship for twenty-four hours, and I do not
see how it can be done. But I will put you in the cars
for Paris, and give you a letter to the American consul
there. He happens to be an old friend of mine; but,
even if he were not, you, as his countrywoman, would
have a claim upon his care. I shall have to trust the
business of getting you properly located to him.”

Elizabeth had had the consulate in her mind before
as the ark of refuge for an American citizen; but the
captain's letter would make matters much easier for
her, and she thanked him warmly. She had scarcely
realized how lonely she was until she was taught it by
the contrasting comfort she felt in the friendly interest
of this stranger.

As she sat in the cars, in the early morning of the
next day but one, whirling on toward Paris, she began,
for the first time since she started on her long journey,

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to tremble in view of the untried life, the new, strange
land. She had Captain Ellis's letter in her pocket, and
he had given minute directions for her guidance; and
yet it came over her, with a sense of awful desolation,
that she was going into the midst of the world's Babel,
the great, tumultuous city of which she had heard so
much, all alone. In that seething, surging sea of
human life, who was there to care if her little bark
went down?

She pressed her face close against the car-window,
and looked out over the strange, unknown land, up to the
constant, always known sky, — God's Heaven, arching
over all. She had cried out to Him before, in the bitterness
of her despair, half doubtful whether He would
hear or heed her; but she had never learned to draw
nigh to Him as to a loving Father. It was strange that
just at this hour, with the unaccustomed scenes of this
new country before her, the murmurs of the almost unknown
tongue buzzing in her ears, the faces whose
aspect was so unfamiliar about her, she first began to
have a near and sweet sense of the Friend who might
be closer than all, — so that out of the very unrest of
time and place, her soul drew nigh to the rest which is
everlasting. It is not for any seer or psychologist of us
all to explain the mental or spiritual experiences of
another soul. Such analysis is beyond our weak vision;
but the truth remains, by whatever means wrought,
that for the first time in Elizabeth's life she felt herself
ready to say, not as an idle form of words, but out of
the depths of her heart, — “Thy will be done.”

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What that will was she did not know; or guess how
widely she might have strayed from the path it had
marked out for her. She was yet to learn her lesson
of life through bitter sorrows; but she felt now that,
however long or lonely the way she trod, she should
never again experience the awful solitariness of a soul
without God in the world.

She grew interested at last in the scenes through
which she was passing, — the low, yet pleasant fields,
where old women with blue umbrellas watched their
cows, or shepherds with their dogs guarded the flocks;
the odd little stone huts, scarcely six feet high, where
the Norman peasants burrowed, with houses of substantial
elegance interspersed now and then; forests, with
their trees set out in rows; quaint costumes; picturesque
churches; pretty railway stations, — every thing
had for her the charm of novelty, the glamour which
invests the unknown.

As she neared Paris, her heart began to beat suffocatingly;
but she found the provident care of Captain
Ellis had extended farther than she knew. A civil
man, wearing the badge of a guard, came forward, and
saved her all trouble with her luggage; and almost before
she knew it she was in a fiacre, driving toward the
consulate, in the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin.

The consul received her with a courtesy, which became
friendliness as soon as he had read Captain Ellis's
letter.

“I think I know the very thing that will suit you,”
he said, “if it is not already taken up. A friend of

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mine, an American artist, left, three days ago, some
quiet rooms, in a quiet old house on the Rue Jacob.
He boarded with a French family, a man and his wife,
who occupy the third floor, and who let him, at a very
reasonable rate, a bedroom and a little sitting-room.
If you could get it, it would be just the place to cast
anchor in at first, — when you know Paris better, you
can make a change if you choose?”

“I shall be thankful enough to cast anchor in any
safe harbor, and stay there,” Elizabeth said, gratefully.

“Then I will send a clerk with you at once. If unfortunately
the rooms are engaged, and you will drive
back here, we will see what else can be done. In addition
to my interest in serving one of my countrywomen,
any friend of Captain Ellis has a peculiar claim upon
me.”

Fortunately the rooms au troisiéme in the house in the
Rue Jacob were not engaged, — most fortunately, Elizabeth
said to herself, for she fell in love with the quaint
old house at once; and her delight was intensified when
she looked out of the windows of the little third-story
back sitting-room, which was to be her own. In the
rear of the house was a delicious old garden, shutting
in a quarter of an acre of ground, in the very heart of
the city. Over the high walls ivy ran luxuriantly, — a
summer-house was in the centre, and flower-beds and
shrubbery promised pleasantly for the spring.

She left the clerk, a voluble Frenchman, to make her
bargain for her, and the matter was settled in five minutes.
Her luggage was brought upstairs, and Madame

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Nugent was at home in her two little rooms, with their
brilliant cleanliness, their smoothly waxed floors, and
inefficient little fires far within the deep jambs, sending
frightened jets of flame up the chimneys. Her delight
in it all was as fresh as a child's. She liked the odd
furniture, — the bits of rug in front of bed, and easy-chair,
and sofa, the inevitable clock and pair of candlesticks
on the chimney-piece, the heavy chintz curtains
about her little bed.

It was her first unalloyed taste of pleasant novelty,
poor girl, and she had left no one whom she loved behind, —
no one to mourn after, no one to be sorry for
her. Her eyes grew bright as she looked around her,
and a fresh glow came to her cheeks. At last she was
out in the world for which she had longed. And she
guessed so little what lay before her, — as little as we
all divine of our to-morrows, God help us.