"Ah! really sir, and the screw?"
"Six hundred and eight thousand, one hundred and thirty."
"I am much obliged to you, sir, for the information."
And the statistician left me without any farewell whatever.
Fabian and Corsican joined me at this moment. Fabian pressed my hand warmly. "Ellen," said he to me, "Ellen will recover. Her reason came back to her for a moment. Ah! God is just, and He will restore her wholly to us."
Whilst thus speaking, Fabian smiled as he thought of the future. As for Captain Corsican, he kissed me heartily without any ceremony. "Good-by, good-by, we shall see you again," he cried to me, when he had taken his place in the tender where were Fabian and Ellen, under the care of Mrs. R———, Captain MacElwin's sister, who had come to meet her brother.
Then the tender sheered off, taking the first convoy of passengers to the Custom House pier. I watched them as they went farther and farther away, and, seeing Ellen sitting between Fabian and his sister, I could not doubt that care, devotion, and love would restore to this poor mind the reason of which grief had robbed it.
Just then someone took hold of my arm, and I knew it was Dr. Pitferge. "Well," said he, "and what is going to become of you?"
"My idea was, Doctor, since the Great Eastern remains a hundred and ninety-two hours at New York, and as I must return with her, to spend the hundred and ninety-two hours in America. Certainly it is but a week, but a week well spent is, perhaps, long enough to see New York, the Hudson, the Mohawk Valley, Lake Erie, Niagara, and all the country made familiar by Cooper."
"Ah! you are going to Niagara!" cried Dean Pitferge. "I declare I should not be sorry to see it again, and if my proposal does not seem disagreeable to you———"
The worthy Doctor amused me with his crotchets. I had taken a fancy to him, and here was a well-instructed guide placed at my service. "That's settled then," said I to him.
A quarter of an hour later we embarked on the tender and at three o'clock were comfortably lodged in two rooms of the Fifth Avenue Hotel.
