It might be myself, or it might be my homely mourning habit, that elicited this mark of contempt; more likely, both.
A bell rang; her father (I afterwards knew that it was her father) kissed her, and returned to land.

The packet sailed.
Foreigners say that it is only English girls who can thus be trusted to travel alone, and deep is their wonder at the daring confidence of English parents and guardians.

As for the "jeunes Meess," by some their intrepidity is pronounced masculine and "inconvenant," others regard them as the passive victims of an educational and theological system which wantonly dispenses with proper "surveillance." Whether this particular young lady was of the sort that can the most safely be left unwatched, I do not know: or, rather did not _then_ know; but it soon appeared that the dignity of solitude was not to her taste.

She paced the deck once or twice backwards and forwards; she looked with a little sour air of disdain at the flaunting silks and velvets, and the bears which thereon danced attendance, and eventually she approached me and spoke.
"Are you fond of a sea-voyage ?" was her question.
I explained that my _fondness_ for a sea-voyage had yet to undergo the test of experience; I had never made one.
"Oh, how charming!" cried she.

"I quite envy you the novelty: first impressions, you know, are so pleasant.