They did not go north, as Sir Charles intended, an unaccountable reluctance on Paul's part to return through Switzerland changed their plans. Instead, by a fortunate chance, the large schooner yacht of a rather eccentric old friend came in to Venice, and the father eagerly accepted the invitation to go on board and bring his invalid.
The owner, one Captain Grigsby, had been quite alone, so the three men would be in peace, and nothing could be better for Paul than this warm sea air.
"Typhoid fever?" Mark Grigsby had asked.
"No," Sir Charles had replied, "considerable mental tribulation over a woman."
"D--d kittle cattle!" was Captain Grigsby's polite comment. "A fine boy, too, and promising--"
"Appears to have been almost worth while," Sir Charles added, "from what I gather--and, confound it, Grig, we'd have done the same in our day."
But Captain Grigsby only repeated: "D--d kittle cattle!"
And so they weighed anchor, and sailed along the Italian shores of the sun-lit Adriatic.
These were better days for Paul. Each hour brought him back some health and vigour. Youth and strength were asserting their own again, and the absence of familiar objects, and the glory of the air and the blue sea helped sometimes to deaden the poignant agony of his aching heart. But there it was underneath, an ever-present, dull anguish. And only when he became sufficiently strong to help the sailors with the ropes, and exert physical force, did he get one moment's respite. The two elder men watched him with kind, furtive eyes, but they never questioned him, or made the slightest allusion to his travels.
And the first day they heard him laugh Sir Charles looked down at the white foam because a mist was in his eyes.
They had coasted round Italy and Sicily, and not among the Ionian Isles, as had been Captain Grigsby's intention.
"I fancy the lady came from some of those Balkan countries," Sir Charles had said. "Don't let us get in touch with even the outside of one of them."
And Mark Grigsby had grunted an assent.
"The boy is a fine fellow," he said one morning as they looked at Paul hauling ropes. "He'll probably never get quite over this, but he is fighting like a man, Charles--tell me as much as you feel inclined to of the story."
So Sir Charles began in his short, broken sentences: "Parson's girl to start with--sympathy over a broken collar-bone. The wife behaved unwisely about it, so the boy thought he was in love. We sent him to travel to get rid of that idea. It appears he met this lady in Lucerne--seems to have been an exceptional person--a Russian, Tompson says--a Queen or Princess incog., the fellow tells me--but I can't spot her as yet. Hubert will know who she was, though--but it does not matter--the woman herself was the thing. Gather she was quite a remarkable woman--ten years older than Paul."