HER SAILOR

A Love Story

BY

MARSHALL SAUNDERS

AUTHOR OF
“BEAUTIFUL JOE,” “ROSE À CHARLITTE,”
“DEFICIENT SAINTS,” ETC.

“Now if you love the southern sea

And pleasant summer weather;

Come, let us mount this gallant ship,

And sail away together.”

New York
International Association of Newspapers and Authors
1901

Copyright, 1899
By L. C. Page and Company
(INCORPORATED)
George M. Hill Company
Printers and Binders
Chicago, Ill.

I DEDICATE
THIS MY FIRST STORY
TO MY MOST INDULGENT CRITIC,
THE ONE WHO WILL HAVE MOST PATIENCE WITH ITS
IMPERFECTIONS,—MY BELOVED MOTHER,
Maria Kisborough Freeman Saunders
OF HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA.

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE.

Miss Marshall Saunders’s first published work was issued in England in 1889, under the title, “My Spanish Sailor.” In the present volume, while not materially altering the plot or action, Miss Saunders has added a number of new incidents, and, as indicated by the change in title, has made some minor changes in the time and scene of the original story.

CONTENTS.

HER SAILOR.

CHAPTER I.
’TIS THE UNEXPECTED THAT OCCURS.

“I must wear a willow garland,

For my love is on the sea;

He’s a gay and gallant rover,

And I ’spect he’s false to me.”

The particular weeping willow from which this garland was to be gathered was one of the most pliant and flexible in Rubicon Meadows, and it needed to be so; for many years it had been used as a rocking-horse by the slender, graceful girl swinging on one of its drooping branches.

Up and down she went, seated comfortably on one of the lower limbs. The time was seven o’clock in the morning, the season early July,—the period of greatest greenness, freshness, and delicacy in the New England summer.

The girl was putting in the hour that must elapse before her parents should see fit to descend from their chamber and partake of breakfast; and while she swung, her gaze wandered far out over the meadows toward the distant village twinkling and sparkling in the early morning sun.

It was one of the loveliest spots in New Hampshire, but the river and the meadows and the village were an old story to the swinging girl. At present her thoughts were far from her home and her immediate surroundings; and, closing her eyes, she sang more vivaciously than ever:

“‘He’s a gay and gallant rover,

And I ’spect he’s false to me.’”

“No, he isn’t,” said a voice, so deep and so sudden that she almost lost her balance, and her hazel eyes flew open with unwonted rapidity.

“Ah!” she said, drawing a long breath, and clinging closer to her shaggy green steed.

While she had been singing the man had come down the dusty road to the old-fashioned house on the meadows,—a man of medium size, possessing a strongly built, powerful frame, a dark face burnt almost black from the sun, and a peculiar gravity of manner that proclaimed even more loudly than his swarthy complexion some foreign admixture of blood.

The girl in the tree knew who he was. This was the lover of whom she had been singing. He was the offspring of an adventurous Spanish maiden, of Valencia, who had run away from home to marry a love-stricken British sailor; and the girl was American, or considered herself so, and her lover was considerably older than herself. When he removed his hat her eyes went unerringly to his one defect, the unmistakable bald spot in the centre of his thick crop of black hair.

He delighted in startling her. He had crept softly through the gate and under the tree where she was singing; and gazing demurely down at him as he stood with his head a few inches from her face, she remarked, mischievously, “Mr. Owl, do you see the sun? Why did you not wait for the moon?”

He reached up one hand and seized the trembling branch, then with the other gently attempted to draw the light head from its nest of green leaves. It would not come. What an exquisite, waggish, obstinate and altogether adorable little head it was. Yet it would not lie on his shoulder.

“Come down, chickadee,” he said, longingly.

“Come up, Mr. Owl,” she replied, teasingly.

She was daring him. Both his powerful arms went up to her perch; and, lifting her down, he seated himself on the rustic bench underneath, and smoothed back the fluffy auburn hair from her white forehead.

She sat on his knee with her red lips firmly pressed together. She would not open them. She was obdurate to his appeals for a word, a smile, a caress.

“Go back, then, you obstinate parrot,” he said; and, irritably restoring her to her former position, he stretched himself against the back of the seat, and propped his head on his hand.

She drew aside one of the willow’s pendant arms. “This—at seven o’clock in the morning! I am shocked.”

“I have been up all night,” he replied, sleepily.

“All night,—then you were after no good.”

“No, no good,” he said, uncovering an eye to look at her. “I was drawing out a new will, arranging papers, etc., preparatory to—”

“Suicide?” she asked, in an interested way.

“No, not suicide, matrimony. To-morrow morning at six of the clock I shall cease to be a free man.”

The girl looked him all over; she observed curiously the effect of the little flecks of light playing from his dusty walking shoes up to his dark, smooth face with its heavy black moustache. Then she said, hastily, “I shall not marry you to-morrow, Mr. Owl.”

“I did not ask you to, Miss Parrot,” he said, disagreeably.

The girl resumed her swinging, her eyes this time fixed on the green meadows and the pretty village. For a long time she ignored the presence of her lover as completely as she did that of the huge black watch-dog loitering about the trunk of the tree in expectation of her descent and preparation of his breakfast.

However, she was singing of him, although she did not address him, and as she sang the man’s gloomy expression changed to one of complacence, for he was again her theme.

“‘I remember the black wharves and the slips,

And the sea-tides tossing free,

And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,

And the beauty and mystery of the ships,

And the magic of the sea.’”

He knew what she was thinking of. Her busy young brain was occupied with its favourite problem, namely, himself. Ever since childhood she had been told that some mysterious link bound her to him; that every particle of food she ate, every scrap of clothing she wore, came from him; that, in short, she belonged to him, and, according to some secret and to her unknown arrangement, her marriage to him was a predetermined, foreordained thing; that if she refused to submit, she might fall victim to some threatening evil, some shadowy calamity. And now he knew that he had puzzled her, for in the face of all this past instruction he had just made her think he was about to marry some other woman.

“What are you crying about, birdie?” he asked, suddenly.

Big tear-drops were quietly rolling down her cheeks and over her white dress; but, without making any effort to wipe them away, she was singing more unconcernedly than ever. This time, however, a different tune and different words.

“‘He sighed her to death with his sighs so deep,

He drugged her asleep with his bad black eyes,

He tangled her up in his stories steep,

And made her think of him marriagewise.’”

“The dickens! What are you reciting, you little recluse?” he inquired, with pardonable brusqueness.

“Something I made up after reading in a book about a deceitful man who inveigled a poor woman into marriage with him,” she replied, not meeting his eyes, and keeping her own fixed on a distant church steeple.

“What are you crying about, birdie?” he repeated again, this time in the softest and gentlest of tones.

“Am I crying?” she asked, innocently brushing a hand over her cheek. “It must be for that poor creature who has to be your wife.”

“Has to be,—she has promised me fifty times over;” and, forgetting his fatigue, he sprang up, and once more laid a hand on the swinging limb.

The girl tried to start it. It would not move, and she exclaimed, imperiously, “Please take your hand off my horse’s bridle.”

The horse was still detained, and, refusing to meet the steady glance of his eyes, she gazed away out over the meadows, and sang, waggishly:

“‘I’ll not marry you, kind sir, she said, sir, she said, sir, she said,

I’ll not marry you, kind sir, she said,

Because you are too lordly.’”

“Lordly,” he muttered, “I am your slave. Look here,” and he cautiously lifted a damp curl from her forehead. “You are bathed in perspiration. So much for being a woman, for jumping at conclusions, and landing in a paroxysm of jealousy.”

The girl was forced to call in her wandering gaze. He would stand there until doomsday if she did not; and, with a provoking uplift of her light brows, she looked down into the two black penetrating eyes that pierced her face like lances.

“It was jealousy,” he said, with satisfaction. “You thought for an instant that I was speaking of some other woman.”

“I was not jealous. I was glad.”

“Yes, you were,” he said, doggedly, “and I am glad you were—and listen. Circumstances have arisen that make it necessary for me to give you the protection of my name. You trust me fully—”

“Not that far!” she exclaimed, measuring off an inch on one of her pink fingers.

He laughed, seized the finger, and carried it to his lips. “I cannot explain, but we must be married at once. It will only be an empty ceremony. You are not ready yet to bow your wilful young neck under the yoke of matrimony.”

“I shall not have a phantom marriage,” she said, indignantly. “Go away, you bad sea-dog.”

“Then let it be a real one,” he said, eagerly. “Give up your will to me. Stop being a wilful spoiled child of a fiancée, and become a loving, sensible little wife. You can if you want to. There is nothing but the frail barrier of your will between us. Sometimes I think I would like to break it, but—” suddenly pausing. “What a fool I am! One might as well rhapsodise to a marble statue as to you, icy, passionless child that you are. Perhaps when you get away from your present dead-and-alive surroundings—”

“Perhaps what?” she inquired, and her beautiful eyebrows again went into the air.

“You will live with me, make a home for me, act sane instead of insane,” he said, shortly.

“What do you mean by getting away from my dead-and-alive surroundings?” she inquired.

“It means that after that ceremony to-morrow, which will make you feel neither maid, wife, nor widow, I want to take you away from here. You would like to travel?”

“To travel,—to see new places, new people? I, who have not even been allowed to go to Boston?” and she stretched out the flowing white sleeves of her gown, like wings. “What a question to ask me!”

“You could not travel,” he said, gloomily. “There were reasons.”

“I won’t believe there were reasons till I know them,” she said, obstinately. “You have kept me shut up here. You,—not poor papa and mamma,—until I am so tired of everything, so sick of the same old roads, the same old people, the same girls and boys, even the same sticks and stones. I began to think I was never to leave it. I was to stay here till I died, died, died.”

“Well, now is your chance.”

“I don’t wish any chance this way. I wish to go alone.”

He released the branch and threw himself down again on the seat. “You are going with me.”

“Am I going to England?”

“Yes.”

“Am I going on the Merrimac? Am I really to have a voyage?”

“Yes and yes. Do you think I would let you sail under any other man’s orders?”

She made no reply for a time, and seemed to be fully occupied in following the windings of the serpent-like Rubicon.

“You need not pose as my wife,—that is, you need not occupy yourself with me. Every man in command of a ship is accustomed to have solitary young persons travelling in his charge. I shall not impose my society upon you—not unless you request it,” he added, slowly.

She had traced the Rubicon until it blended with the horizon, and now she looked into his resolved face. “What do you propose to do with me when we reach England?”

“I propose to follow your wishes to the last degree,” he said, with weary gallantry. “If you wish to stay in England I will find some suitable place for you; if you wish to come back with me—” a short satisfied laugh finished the sentence.

“You think I will come back with you,” she said, uneasily.

“I know you will,” he replied, with a conceit so marked that her quick temper was aroused in a flash. “I shall not go one step with you,” she cried, petulantly.

“Why not?” he asked, coolly.

“Because you will make me—make me—” She choked and stammered, and could not proceed.

“Make you what?” he said, gravely. “I shall not force you to be my wife, if that is what you mean. I hope—I want you to consent to live with me sometime; but I give you my word that, if you do not come willingly, you come not at all.”

“It isn’t that,” she cried, trying to stamp her foot, but only agitating it violently in the unresisting air. “I know I will give in, I know I will go, I know you will make me mind you—you will make me glad to do it. Oh, I am so angry!”

She was indeed angry, and the pink fingers were now raging among the willow leaves, and stripping them from their twigs. “And you don’t love me,” she went on, furiously, “you only love having your own detestable way.”

“So you think I don’t love you,” he said, meditatively.

“Of course you don’t. You never blush when you see me, you never stammer when you talk. You take everything for granted. Other men don’t act like that.”

“What do I want to blush for? I have done nothing to be ashamed of,” he said, doggedly, “and why should I stammer? I have got a straight tongue in my head, and how do you know what other men do?”

“Don’t I read books,—don’t I see them? There’s one boy in Rubicon Meadows turns perfectly purple when he sees me. I don’t like having known you ever since I was a baby. I wish you would go away and let me alone,” and she sulkily executed a movement on the branch by which her back was turned on him.

“All right; I have dangled about you long enough. Now I will give place to the Rubicon Meadows boys. You have played fast and loose with me about our engagement, and I don’t believe you ever intend to marry me. If you don’t call me back before I get to that second row of gooseberry-bushes you will never see me again.”

“You don’t mean ‘never,’” said the girl, hotly, over her shoulder; “you’re tired and cross, and you’ve lost your last remnant of temper. You’re in a pretty state of mind to come proposing to a girl.”

“Good-bye, Nina,” he continued, calmly. “Tell your next admirer that I said you were a nice little girl, but you have a d— a dragon of a temper.”

“Good-bye, monster,” she called after him, as he took up his hat and strode away. “You’re a nice man, but you’re getting stout and middle-aged, and you’re a great deal older than I am, and the bald spot in the middle of your head is increasing, and I just hate you—I hate you.”

Wincing under the dainty brutality of her personal allusions, the man clapped his hat on his head and quickened his steps. His gravity of manner was all gone. No one in the world had power to stir him as this slip of a girl had.

She watched him going, dashing the tears from her eyes as she watched. He had passed the rose-bush, the ugly rose-bush that never bore anything but worm-eaten roses. She wished that a tempest would come and tear it from its roots. He had stumbled over the big mossy stone by the well, the miserable stone on which every one tripped. She wished he would fall down and break a limb. He had passed the first row of gooseberry-bushes. Why did they not stretch out their thorny arms and tear his clothes?

Now he had reached the second row of gooseberries. “Pirate!” she shrieked, wrathfully, after him.

He would not reply to her. He was fumbling with the fastening of the gate,—the old-fashioned fastening that her father was always forgetting to have mended. She hoped that he might be detained there an hour. No, a gate would not stop him. He had placed a hand on it, and had vaulted over. Now he had disappeared.

She would run to the gate to see the last of him, and she slipped down the tree-trunk like a lithe little cat. “That stupid fastening!” and she furiously rattled the gate. Then she climbed over. She would follow him just for fun—not with the idea of appeasing him.

For some seconds she trotted silently after him down the dusty road. Then she called gently, “Esteban!”

He did not turn. He had said the second row of gooseberry-bushes, and now he was crossing the Rubicon. And he always kept his word.

“Esteban,” she called, wildly, “come back! You have dropped your pocketbook.”

Again he did not look around, but she saw his hand go up to his side. He must have heard her.

She tried again. “Esteban, I wish to tell you something—something important.”

He would not turn. He did not turn until he heard a heavy splash in the river.

“That tiresome girl,”—and, choking an exclamation, he strode back to the bridge. She had jumped into the river to annoy him. No, she had not gone herself, she had sent the big black dog who was swimming composedly about. The fool—he would do anything she told him. She was in hiding herself,—he could see her brown head under one of the seats of the bridge.

The tired man flung himself down on the opposite seat, and fixed his eyes on the head. How brown, nay, how yellow it looked. He got up and peered down at it. It was not his little sweetheart curled up there. He was gazing at a bunch of yellow flowers.

He turned hastily to the river. There was her cap floating on the water. He became sick and faint. There had been only one splash, yet where was she? Every tender memory of his life, every ambition for the future, clustered around that brown head. He would go and get her. He would search in the grass of the river bank, he would—his head fell on his arm, and a strange, delicious forgetfulness crept over him. He was going to faint for the first time in his life. He struggled against it, first violently, then feebly, then his head fell on his breast and he knew no more.

CHAPTER II.
SCHOOLMA’AM AND WIFE, BUT NEVER A MOTHER.

While the sailor and the young girl were having their conversation in the garden, two people who were intensely interested in their movements were taking their breakfast in one of the back rooms of the plain, old-fashioned house.

One of them was a fat, testy man, with large and prominent watery gray eyes, who was irritably chipping the top from an egg, and varying this occupation by casting frequent and semi-displeased glances through the open window. Mr. Israel Danvers was master of this house, owner of the principal store in the village across the meadows, and husband of the woman with the large, cool, comfortable face, who sat opposite him pouring his coffee.

“I wonder what that Fordyce is up to now?” he muttered, with a whole volley of glances outside.

“I don’t know,” responded Mrs. Danvers, tranquilly, “but I imagine it’s something important. Otherwise he’d wait for lamplight.”

“What do you mean by important?”

“I mean marriage.”

Mr. Danvers fretfully scattered his egg-shell on the table-cloth. “Nina is too young to marry.”

“She is eighteen.”

“She is too young, I say. She is nothing but a butterfly.”

“She is certainly frivolous,” said Mrs. Danvers, with a judicial air.

“Would you have her a suspicious old woman?” retorted her husband. “She’s got the b-best heart and the s-sweetest disposition,—she’s a fine girl,” he concluded, lamely. He could not be eloquent, but he felt deeply, and his prominent eyes watered in a sincere and affectionate manner as he went on with his breakfast.

“Where’s my coffee?” he asked, presently.

Mrs. Danvers started slightly, and passed him the forgotten cup.

“You’ve half filled it with sugar,” he said, “I guess you were dreaming when you poured it.”

Again she said nothing, and quietly poured him another cup; but he persisted, “What was you thinking of, Melinda?”

“I was pondering on the mysteries of the law of mutual selection, if you must know,” she said, calmly.

He surveyed her suspiciously. She had been a school-teacher before she married him, and her education had been greatly superior to his own. Comprehending his state of mind, she went on, kindly: “With regard to Fordyce and Nina. He lands in a state where there are one hundred and fifty thousand more women than men. The most of those women have good eyes, ears, noses, fine heads of hair, yet he comes rushing over the border into New Hampshire.”

“I’ll venture to say there isn’t another Nina in Massachusetts,” said the fat man.

“I agree with you there. She is unique.”

“Do you think she likes Fordyce well enough to marry him?” he asked, anxiously.

Mrs. Danvers became thoughtful, until an impatient movement from her husband forced an opinion from her. “I don’t know, Israel. I guess she likes him better than she pretends to, and you’ve no occasion to worry about her marrying him. Wild horses wouldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do; but I don’t know all her mind about Fordyce. She understands me better than I understand her.”

Surprised at this unlooked-for admission, he said, agreeably, “She’s a clever little coot.”

“Clever,—she’s the smartest girl I ever saw. She’s too smart. I’m afraid Fordyce will have trouble with her.”

“Clever, how clever?” interposed Mr. Danvers, up in arms for his favourite. “You don’t mean to say she’s sneaky?”

“No, not sneaky,” said Mrs. Danvers, in deep thought; “not sneaky, but shy and nervous, and pretending she’s got plenty of coolness when she hasn’t, and more one for getting her way secretly than openly. And she’s full of tricks and moods and quirks of all kinds. You don’t understand her, Israel.”

Mr. Danvers did not know whether to be gratified or annoyed by his wife’s expansive state of mind. She had never before spoken just so freely of their adopted daughter. “I don’t try to understand her,” he said, doubtfully. “I just take her as she is.”

“Fordyce don’t. He wants to know every thought in her mind,” proceeded Mrs. Danvers, “and thinks he knows them, too, but sometimes he’s too sure.”

“He’s too short with her, too short,” observed Mr. Danvers, pettishly. “He ought to take into account that she’s got a will of her own.”

“He’s a primitive man; he’d kill any one that took her away from him. You see he’s got nothing but her.”

Mr. Danvers was silent. He did not know what she meant by a primitive man.

“He could step right out into the woods and live with savages,” explained Mrs. Danvers; “and if he wanted a woman he’d knock her down with his club and carry her off to his cave with the best of them.”

Mr. Danvers treated her to an exhibition of open-mouthed astonishment and disapproval. “Melinda, are you crazy to talk of such goings-on?”

“Men don’t do such things nowadays,” she said, soothingly, “but there’s a heap of wild nature in a good many of us. I guess you’d like to turn Fordyce out this very minute.”

“You bet your life I would,” said the fat man, with energy, and without premeditation. “I’d send him flying down that road. He’s too old for Nina. Let her marry one of the boys around here.”

“Do you know what she calls the Rubicon Meadows boys?” asked Mrs. Danvers, dryly.

“No, but I know she don’t mean a third of what she says.”

“Giggling colts, Israel. Colts, just think of it. You see Fordyce has a kind of manner of knowing everything, and he’s out in the world. Then he comes stealing in her life like a mystery, and she likes that. I guess we’ve got to let him have her. We couldn’t stop him, anyway. He’ll tame her and she’ll do him good. I expect he’s mortal blue at times.”

Mr. Danvers relapsed into sullenness, tinged with vindictiveness. He understood his wife well enough to know that the burden of her talk was the duty of resignation. “You’ve always been hard on that girl,” he said, irascibly.

“Hard on her, Israel! Seventeen years I’ve had her, and there isn’t a soul in Rubicon Meadows besides you that guesses she isn’t our own child. How’s that for being hard on her?”

Melinda’s eyes were sparkling. She looked ten years younger than she had before their conversation began, and he abruptly drifted into memories of bygone days. So far back did he go that it was some time before he murmured, absently: “Howsomever, you’ve been well paid for it.”

“Paid for it,” she repeated, with asperity, “there are some things money can’t pay for.”

This was a statement he could not deny, yet in some indefinable and inexplicable way he felt that she had been slightly lacking in her duty to the lovable butterfly outside. Melinda did not admire the pretty creature as he did; and at this very instant her unusual outspokenness and animation arose from her acute suspicion that their vivacious charge was about spreading her wings for flight.

She was a good woman, though, this wife of his, and she was only a trifle queer. However, everybody seemed queer but himself, and he sank into bitter and resigned reflection, and muttered, almost inaudibly, “After all said and done, we’ve got to take folks after the pattern they’re made, and not as we’d make ’em over.”

Mrs. Danvers saw that the tide was turning. “Israel,” she said, solemnly shaking her head at him, “no one will ever know what I’ve gone through with that child. When she was laid in my arms a little, motherless babe, and her tiny fingers curled around mine, my heart went out to her. She’s got it yet, but she’s been greatly provoking, and you’ve made too much of her, Israel, you know you have.”

“I’ll not deny I’ve favoured her some,” he said, gruffly.

“I’ve never spoken about it before,” she replied, nervously, “and I’ll never say it again; but I’ve been jealous of that girl, Israel, real jealous; and yet, with it all, you’ll not miss her as much when she goes as I will. A man gets over things. A woman broods.”

Mr. Danvers weakly toyed with a morsel of bread.

“I’ve got some of the mother spirit,” his wife went on, with tears in her eyes. “Enough of it, thank the Lord, to make me sorry to have her go. We’ve got to be lonely, Israel, real lonely, after she leaves, and I’m glad to have this talk first.”

Mr. Danvers was embarrassed, exceedingly embarrassed; and for the first time in his life was willing to acknowledge that possibly he might have done wrong, possibly he might have indulged too much the pink and white gipsy in the muslin frock outside. However, it was not befitting his position as head of the household to eat too large a piece of humble pie at one time, so he said, protestingly, “As for jealousy, how you women run on. You’re just like wildfire. Now I’ve liked that little girl just as if she was my own, but not like you, Melinda. A man’s wife is different. I wonder you speak of such a thing, and I a deacon in the church.”

“I wasn’t speaking of anything but your acting like a foolish father,” she said, indignantly. “Of course you’d never think of comparing Nina to me. She’s only a baby, and whatever happens, Israel Danvers, I hope you’ll remember I am your wedded wife. I know I’m getting old—”

She broke down, and tears finished the sentence.

Mr. Danvers was aghast. He had not seen her cry for twenty years,—not since her mother died. Getting up with difficulty, he waddled to her end of the table, and, gingerly tapping her shoulder, ejaculated, “So, so, there,—so, so.”

Mrs. Danvers wiped her eyes and gave him a slight push. “I’m not a cow, Israel, and go back to your seat. There’s some one coming.”

Nina was quietly slipping in through the window. Approaching the foot of the table, she took Mr. Danvers’s bald head in her embrace and kissed him sweetly and fervently. Then, nearing the head of the table, she pecked at Mrs. Danvers’s cheek in an affectionate but perfunctory manner.

“Here’s your mush,” said Mrs. Danvers, uncovering a small bowl. “Israel, pass the cream; where’s Captain Fordyce, Nina?”

“I left him on the bridge. I think he must be waiting for the moon,” she said, seriously.

Her lips were pale, and there was a nervous expression about her eyes, and Mrs. Danvers said to herself, “They’ve had a quarrel.”

“Ever see him by daylight before, pussy?” asked Mr. Danvers.

“No, daddy.”

“Must look kind of queer.”

“He looks older,” said the girl, with her spoon poised over her mush. She had fallen into a reverie and was gazing fixedly out the window. After a time she roused herself and said: “He had a faint turn on the bridge.”

“He—faint?” said Mrs. Danvers, incredulously.

“Yes,” said Nina, with a queer look, and dropping her eyes. “He has been working hard and not eating much, and the sun shone on his head and made him dizzy. I thought, mamma, you might give him some medicine.”

“I’ll give him some if he’ll take it,” said Mrs. Danvers, grimly, “but he’s not one to be coddled. What is he coming in the daytime for? Does he want anything particular?”

Nina turned quickly and gave her an owlish stare,—a stare so sudden that Mrs. Danvers had not time to avert her own gray eyes shining with so glad a light.

“Would you let him marry me right away, mamma, if he wanted to?”

“Well,” hesitated Mrs. Danvers, “your case isn’t like others. Of course your engagement has been standing a good while.”

“Does he want to marry you right off?” asked Mr. Danvers, sharply.

“Yes, dear daddy,” said the girl, softly, “but you won’t let me go, will you?”

Mr. Danvers tried to speak, but only uttered a low, confused rumble like that of a helpless animal. He could do nothing, and the girl turned to her adopted mother. Her curiously expectant glance was not met. Mrs. Danvers’s head was bent over her plate. There was no protest there. The marriage must take place.

Nina, having fully satisfied herself on this point, reached out her hand for the sugar-bowl; and, carefully dusting her oatmeal, poured cream on it, and proceeded to take her breakfast in silence and composure.

“Why, there’s Captain Fordyce,” said Mrs. Danvers, suddenly. “Come in, come in,” she went on, addressing the sailor, who stood by the low, open window. “You must want some breakfast.”

They were all staring at him, but he looked his usual self, and, with a brief salutation to his host and hostess, he entered the room and seated himself at the table.

“Have some hot drink,” said Mrs. Danvers, passing him a cup. “It will make you feel better.”

His gaze went suspiciously to Nina, and the faintest and most evanescent of blushes passed over his dark face. “I had no dinner yesterday,” he said, gruffly, “and the racket on the wharf was deafening.”

“Did you have a prosperous voyage from England?” asked Mrs. Danvers, amiably.

“Yes.”

“And an agreeable company of passengers?”

“Fair,—I didn’t see much of them.”

“Were there any nice, nice girls on board?” lisped Nina, in her infantine fashion.

“Plenty,” he said unexpectedly, fixing her with an indulgent stare.

She did not address him again during the meal, although she listened attentively to every one of the curt sentences with which he favoured her parents. He was always grave, almost severe with them. Why was he not with them, with the rest of the world, as he was with her? Why at her slightest word did he lose his air of command, soften his tone, and adjust himself to any mood she happened to be in? Was it only because he loved her, or was there some other reason? It was certainly very puzzling, and the man across the table, who was intently following her meditations, smiled to himself, as he heard the perturbed little sigh with which she always concluded them.

Mr. Danvers scarcely spoke, and the others rarely addressed him; for they plainly felt that the atmosphere about him was somewhat electrical.

“Poor old fatty,” soliloquised Captain Fordyce, “he’s blue to think of losing his little playmate. I’m sorry for him,” and he gazed approvingly at the stout man. “Madam there loves Nina because she is a dressed-up doll, representing duty and dollars;” and he favoured his hostess with a sardonic glance. “Schoolma’am and wife, but never a mother. Time my little wench was out of this.”

Mr. Danvers finished his breakfast, then rose in sulky silence. While Nina ran to get his hat and cane, he addressed Captain Fordyce:

“So you want to steal our child?”

“I do.”

The fat man choked back some emotion. “Is she willing to go?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Danvers brought his plump fist down on the table with noiseless emphasis, and threw a defiant glance at his wife. “Well, mark this, she’s always got a home here if anything befalls you. And don’t ever force the truth on her. I wouldn’t for a thousand dollars have her know she isn’t our child.”

“And I wouldn’t for a thousand more,” said Captain Fordyce, coolly.

“Would not this be a good time to inform her of the true state of affairs?” interposed Mrs. Danvers. “Is not truth always better than error?”

Captain Fordyce frowned at her, Mr. Danvers ejaculated, “Hold your tongue, Melinda;” but nothing further could be said, for at that instant Nina came gliding back.

“Here is your hat, daddy dear,” then, tucking her hand under his arm, she left the room with him.

Mrs. Danvers followed the two with a peculiar glance, and Captain Fordyce, seeing it, smiled.

“Are her traps in order for travelling?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, laconically.

“I will take her away to-morrow.”

She looked slightly ashamed, and fell into a silence that lasted until Nina returned, when she wandered away into the kitchen.

The girl had been standing a long time at the gate watching the sorrowful lines of the substantial figure plodding across the meadows. Her face was flushed and disturbed; and, scarcely knowing what she did, she seated herself at the table and made a blind onslaught on a loaf of bread.

“Here, give me that knife, you will cut yourself,” said Captain Fordyce. He laid a thin slice on her plate, then, in a state of utter beatification, for he had had his own way in every particular during a short conversation they had had on the bridge, he sat watching her eat it.

“Three days from now you will be having your breakfast on the Merrimac,” he said, softly.

Nina made a wry face and tried to bury her face in her coffee-cup. He laughed, and, having finished his breakfast, got up and strolled about the room, looking at the pictures hung on the walls.

A quarter of an hour later Nina was alone in the hall with him. He had exchanged a calm good-bye with Mrs. Danvers, after having promised to return to dinner. His leave-taking with his fiancée promised to be more lengthy.

“Oh, do make haste,” she said, inhospitably handing him his hat. “I have my canaries to do, and the dog and cat to feed, and ever so many things beside.”

“Tell me again that you are sorry for being naughty,” he said, gently, “for throwing your cap in the water, and hiding in the rushes.”

“I’m sorry I was sorry,” she said, stoutly; but at the same time, lest she should hurt his feelings, she gave his fingers a gentle, a very gentle pressure.

“You angel,” he said, not rapturously nor passionately, but rather as if he were stating a very commonplace and threadbare fact.

She dropped his fingers as suddenly as if they had turned to red-hot metal in her grasp, and turned her head very far away from him.

“And you will find time among your multitudinous occupations to help your mamma pack,” he went on.

“I don’t think I will go,” she said, feebly. “I think I am going to change my mind again.”

“All right,” he said, taking out his watch. “I will give you a minute. Shall I go or stay? You must make up your mind decidedly before to-morrow. There must be no fooling with sacred things.”

She roguishly bent her face over the watch.

“Time’s up,” he said; “good-bye.”

With a wilful shrug of her shoulders she took the watch in her hand. “Let me put it back.”

He stood patiently while she restored it to its place, and insinuated her thumb and finger in another pocket. “What’s this?” she observed, drawing out a slip of newspaper.

“Give it to me,” he said, trying to take it from her.

But she was too quick for him, and darting to the staircase read aloud the headings of the slip she held in her hand. “Boston Dustman Refused Seventeen Times by His Lady-love, Who Was a Rag-picker. Upon the Occasion of His Eighteenth Refusal Slapped Her in the Face, Whereupon She Promptly Accepted Him.”

“Horrid man! I would have slapped back!” exclaimed Nina, indignantly.

Captain Fordyce was grinning broadly. “Here,—give me that,” and he restored it to his pocket. “It brought me luck.”

“Luck with me?” she cried.

“Yes, birdie.”

She was about to dart away, but he held her gently by the arm, and, stroking his moustache in a meditative way, said: “One day, years ago, I remember seeing you dragged out of bed at midnight—a rosy, tumbled heap—to say ‘How d’ye do’ to a rough young sailor, whom you kissed and were not at all afraid of. That was our first merry meeting, and every one since has been flavoured, seasoned, sanctified, what you will, by the same charming salute. You are not going to cut me off this time as you did this morning?” and he brought his black, teasing eyes close to her face.

“I made up for it on the bridge,” she said, hastily. “Let me go, you—you Spaniard.”

This was her choicest word of abuse, but it did not take effect now. “No, you didn’t,” he said, obstinately. “Now, Nina!”

The faint, the very faint tone of command in his voice warned her that this was one of the occasions on which she must not refuse him. But she drew her hand across her lips afterward, and murmured something about salt to her eyeballs.

He looked down at the orbs in question. “Those are bright, happy eyes, child. You don’t mean one-half you say;” and with this impeachment on her veracity he took his leave, and hurried away in the direction of the village.

CHAPTER III.
SHE WHO FIGHTS AND RUNS AWAY.

At the foot of the Danvers garden was a grassy field, and through the field ran a laughing, purling brook hurrying to join the sinuous Rubicon winding through the meadow beyond.

The brook was a favourite resort of Nina’s; but now, at eleven o’clock at night, she was supposed to be in bed; and, deprived of the cheering light of her presence, her lover rambled alone on the grassy bank. No, not her lover,—her new-made husband. There had been a slight change in his plans. Thanks to his business activity and habits of despatch, he had so hurried these slow country people that he had been able to have his marriage ceremony performed on the afternoon of his day of arrival, instead of postponing it until the following morning.

Now as he walked to and fro smoking and talking to himself, he chuckled delightedly. “That old white-haired magistrate looked scared. He will not get over his fright for a week. However, Nina won’t have to get up so early in the morning. We can take a later train to the city. Poor little thing,—what the dickens am I pitying her for?” and he paused, impatiently. “She’s safely married and provided for. She’s glad to get out of this—never in the world would have settled down here attached to one of these lumbering youths. Good enough fellows,” he went on, thoughtfully, “better than I am; but she’s too fine for them, too high-strung. No material for a farmer’s wife there. Now we’ll see her character unfold. I must be patient with her.”

He stopped short and stared up at the sky. He had one instant of an exquisite and sympathetic comprehension of the faults and beauties in the character of a fellow creature. Then his exalted expression faded, and he shook himself, impatiently. “Pshaw! what a black expanse! A jetty pincushion stuck full of pins. Darkest night this month. So I am married,” and he resumed his walk. “Where are my complex emotions? I am only glad I’ve got her to have and to hold and to win for my wife. Curious little fox, pretending to be frightened, and giving me the cold shoulder all day. She will come around in time, and make a home for me. She’s the cutest thing in the world, as these Americans say. She will keep me amused,” and he laughed aloud, and waved his cigar like a small red torch in the darkness.

“I must sell some of that railway stock,” he went on, presently, “our expenses will increase now; for once out of her nest my bird will want new feathers,” and his mind wandered off to practical and financial affairs.

In the midst of his hurry through the day, he had found time to take a nap, and his sleepiness and faintness of the morning had passed away. Occasionally he glanced in the direction of the little black village gone sound asleep, where was his inn for the night; but he was not ready to go to it yet. The soft evening air allured him, and, with the luxurious appreciation of an alternate seafarer and dweller in cities, he revelled in the seldom enjoyed pleasure of a country night with its subdued and muffled noises.

“Jove! I like those land smells,” he muttered, “earthy and sweet they are and unlike the sea, though for all time give me the dash of briny. And the noises—let me count them,” and he paused again and elevated one ear more than the other. “Distant dogs barking—when do the brutes sleep? Cow bawling—her calf has been taken away; owl tooting like a fog-horn. Brats of birds stirring in their nests, one fellow crowding the other—just heard them swear in twitter,” and he gazed into the sombre mass of an elm above him. “Engine shrieking—fast train for Boston. Footsteps pattering—hello! from Danvers’s house, too. Naughty Bridget—didn’t Nina say the grocer had a weakness for her fried cakes? But surely they don’t walk and talk as late as this from that exemplary household. However, I’ll not spoil her fun,” and he moved back in the shelter of the tree.

A minute later he resumed his place by the stepping-stones. Dark as it was, he knew that slender, white figure emerging from the embrace of night.

“Nina!” he ejaculated, in a fond and foolish tone, “my little girl—coming for me!”

She gave a guilty start and drew back.

“What are you carrying?” he went on; and, approaching her, he took a small black bag from her hand.

“My—my things for the night,” she stammered.

“Are you walking in your sleep?” he asked, in a curious tone.

“N-no; I am going to spend the night with a friend,—a girl I know. I am very fond of her. She lives across the meadows.”

“Indeed; shall I see you there before I go to the village?” and he politely threw away his cigar.

Nina hesitated. This was not quite what she wished, and he went on: “Perhaps you do not care for me to see where you are going?”

“No, I don’t,” she said, in a low voice.

“I suppose you are planning to come back in the morning and take the train with me?” he asked, in a livelier way.

“Perhaps I had better not,” she said, evasively.

“By Jove! I believe she’s running away,” he inwardly exclaimed. Outwardly he was cool. “Did you tell Mrs. Danvers about your ardent wish to see this friend?”

“No,” she murmured.

“You must think a heap of her to be rambling off this time of night to see her,” he went on. “Pray do not let me detain you.”

The girl swung her foot to and fro as if feeling for the first stepping-stone; and yet she probably knew perfectly well where it was. Then she said, with a queer catch in her voice, “It looks blacker over there.”

She had been brought up in the country. She was no more afraid of the darkness than he was, but he said, agreeably, “You want me to go with you?”

“N-not all the way. I don’t want you to see where I go.”

There was something peculiar in her voice, something peculiar in her manner, and the puzzled man knit his brows. There had not been quite enough consternation when she discovered him. She was acting, but acting badly. He would edge up on the stage a bit, and he went nearer and peered at her downcast head.

What he saw decided and enlightened him; for he suddenly choked back a laugh, and retreated into the deeper gloom of the tree, from whence a voice presently issued in pretended severity: “Nina, why did you marry me to-day?”

Now the girl was happy. She left the stepping-stone on which she had placed both her small feet and resumed her footing on dry ground. “I married you because I promised to do so. You have been very good to me ever since I was a little child. I am grateful to you, and if there is any profit to you in my marriage, I am willing for you to have it.”

“Profit,” he muttered to himself. “Good heavens, Miss Parrot, what do you mean? This is something you have learned by rote.” However, he kept his wonder to himself, and said aloud and still more sternly:

“Having married me, why are you running away?”

“I am running away because I am not pleased with you,” she said, bravely and glibly. “You treat me as if I were a baby. I am grown up, and am entitled to some respect and consideration, particularly now that I am your wife. I wish to be consulted about things. When I get on board the Merrimac I do not wish to be told I must do this and I must do that.”

He did not speak for a minute. She supposed that he was trying to subdue his wrath, but he was going over a few sentences to himself in a puzzled fashion. “What is that fellow’s name,—Jerrold, is it?—says, ‘While they’re maids they’re mild as milk. Make ’em wives and they set their backs against their marriage certificates and defy you.’”

“I am no better than a puppet,” said the girl excitedly.

“Puppet, that’s good!” said the seafaring man, softly, “and glory to Cupid, she’s getting stirred up. I dare say I do boss her.”

“You have stated your grievance,” he said, in a low growl; “what redress do you ask?”

“I want you to—to let me do as I like about—about going or staying with you.”

“You want to frighten me out of my senses to keep me from making love to you, little witch,” he reflected, “and you’re using this girl as a screen. I see,” he said aloud, “your present most earnest desire is to go and visit this girl you love so much, and let me go away without you. Then after I have had a trip to England and back, which will give me ample time to meditate on the folly of my ways, I may come and get you.”

She did not reply for a minute. “Seems to be having some difficulty with her organs of speech,” soliloquised the man behind the tree. “Just for contrariness, I’ll check. Have your own way,” he said, with well-assumed surliness. “I wouldn’t take you with me to-morrow for a thousand pounds.”

The girl was terrified. She had gone too far. She had roused the ugly, black, Spanish temper of whose existence she was well aware, but of which she had never seen an exhibition. “Esteban,” she said, piteously, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings; if you would only let me do a little more as I want to.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” he uttered, in a sepulchral voice; “why did you wait to blight our marriage day?”

“I—I couldn’t get courage,” she stammered. “I—I am a little frightened of you.”

The night air was so clear that he could hear every one of her fluttering whispers, yet he pretended that he had not caught them, and launched into a raging philippic against the ingratitude of women in general.

It accomplished her confusion. She had plainly overstepped the limit set around his forbearance, and, dropping her bag on the grass, she put both hands up to her eyes.

She was crying—the darling—and his heart was bleeding for her, but he wished to find out the particulars of this night excursion. “You have deceived me,—you pretended that you would go away with me in the morning.”

“So I am going,” she cried, desperately. “I am only in fun.”

He paused in his ravings. “In fun—”

“Yes; I am only making believe to go to see that girl. I watched you come down here. I am not going to leave you, ’Steban, really. Look in that bag—there isn’t even a toothbrush in it. It’s only stuffed with paper. I am sick of this quiet place. I will be good if you will take me to-morrow.”

“Never—false, deceitful one!” he began, in tones made hollow by a hand placed over his mouth, but his tones were too hollow, too mournful. He was not a first-class actor, and she was too sharp to be deceived any longer.

She dropped her hands from her eyes. She could not see him, but she could plainly hear that, being now discovered, he had given way to his torments of suppressed laughter.

“You mean, mean thing!” she cried, wrathfully; then she wheeled suddenly, threw the bag in his direction, and rushed off through the darkness.

He laughed till the tears came to his eyes, then he groped after the bag. It was as she had said, stuffed with paper. “Poor little soul,” he muttered, “I would have comforted her if she had stayed. She wanted to show me that she was going to take command in this matrimonial alliance, but she didn’t come out well from her first battle. Deserted her colours and ran.”

CHAPTER IV.
RUBICON MEADOWS ARE LEFT BEHIND.

With a face as pale as the handkerchief pressed against it, Nina stood gazing into a corner of the waiting-room in the diminutive railway station of Rubicon Meadows.

Mrs. Danvers had broken down. She was in a pitiable state of confusion, and Mr. Danvers, with his round face in a snarl, was trying to comfort her.

“What hash these women are made of!” grumbled Captain Fordyce to himself. “She wanted Nina to go, she wants her to stay, she will break her heart in earnest if I leave her, and break it in appearance if I take her. Come, Nina, let us go out to the platform, the train will be here in three minutes.”

“’Steban, I can’t leave her—I oughtn’t to,” murmured the girl, miserably.

“All right—stay, then.”

“Mamma, mamma, I will stay with you,” and she ran and threw her arms around the weeping figure.

Captain Fordyce stared at them from under his black brows. An instantaneous and almost imperceptible change passed over the sorrowing woman. He knew it from the movement of her shoulder-blades.

Nina felt it, was confused, and looked around at him.

“Good-bye,” he said, calmly; “wire me if you change your mind before to-morrow noon. If not, I will run up and get you next trip.”

Mrs. Danvers’s sobs ceased. She had been crying at intervals all the morning. This was the climax, “Nina,” she said, in a muffled voice.

The girl put her ear to her lips. Captain Fordyce could not hear what was said, but he could make a shrewd guess. The duty of a wife was to leave father and mother, and cleave to her husband.

Mr. Danvers whirled his ponderous form around, and, winking more vigorously than ever, stepped to the doorway. This was final. Up to the last he had hoped that his wife’s grief would continue, that Captain Fordyce would relent and would leave them their child. They were to lose her. He must go home and face that empty chair.

Mrs. Danvers had straightened herself up, and was pulling down her veil. Captain Fordyce was whisking Nina out to the train bearing down upon Rubicon Meadows with a rush and a roar befitting a monster that would steal children from the very arms of their parents.

Mrs. Danvers had ceased crying now, but Nina had taken up the dismal performance, and was blindly waving farewells from the window of a parlour-car. Now they were gone; that chapter in life’s story was finished,—a lively, eventful chapter,—and now began one unblessed by youth, mischief, and beauty. Mr. Danvers was getting old, and, placing himself by the side of his wife, he plodded wearily homeward. Perhaps if he had married some other woman he might have had children of his own,—but what diabolical thoughts were these crowding his head, and he a deacon in the church; with an inward and horrified shudder he offered his arm to his wife.

She accepted the unusual attention. Her livelier feminine imagination pictured to her a new quiet and a new restfulness and happiness—yes, happiness—that were about to settle on them. It was all for the best,—she could say it through her tears,—although how they should miss that little witch!

Captain Fordyce sat quietly beside the witch. Her parents had been snatched from her. She was turning her bereaved gaze to the town. The shops, the houses, the churches, sprang past. She had only the meadows left, the beautiful Rubicon meadows, with their languidly flowing river,—the place where her little feet had roamed since childhood, and now it, too, was gone. She was out in the open country away from the scenes of her childhood. She was fairly launched on the journey of life. Was it to be a happy one? Where would it end? When would she come back? Perhaps never.

She must be torn to pieces with nervous terror, such terror as probably agitated trembling brides for the first few hours after leaving the parental roof, and in deep and intense sympathy her husband gently touched the tiny gloved hand lying on her lap.

He wished to see her whole face, not a section of pink cheek.

She moved her head abruptly, and presented to him not tears and dejection, but a pouting mouth and a frowning brow. Her agitation was gone. She was worrying over some other matter.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked, wonderingly.

She favoured him with one of her indignant stares.

“That woman is not my mother, why don’t you tell me who she is?”

Captain Fordyce was aghast. Then he looked over his shoulder. He was afraid the man behind had heard her low, wrathful tones. Where in the name of all that was wonderful had she picked up this information? He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it feebly; he must have time to think over this statement, and make up his mind what to answer her; so with an incoherent excuse he left her, and hurried in the direction of the smoking-car.

Before they reached Boston he was again beside her; but he made no effort at conversation, and as if she had forgotten her remark to him, she occupied herself by an animated observation of everything about her. She was intensely interested, intensely pleased, and watched his every movement like a delighted little cat.

“Are we going to stop, already?” she exclaimed, when their carriage, after lumbering through street after street, pulled up in front of a hotel.

He drew out his watch. “I can give you two hours before the Merrimac claims me, but you had better have something to eat first.”

“Can’t I have it here in this carriage?”

“No, you cannot,” he said, decidedly. “I am not going to drive through the streets with a lunching young lady.”

“Then let us make haste,” she said, meekly descending to the pavement.

An hour later, while they were driving to and fro, and he was pointing out objects of special historic interest in the prim old Puritan city, he interposed a question, “How does it all impress you?”

She shook her fluffy head. “Oh, delicious confusion, and noise, plenty of noise! Everything is mixed up to me. I can’t seem to separate things. You show me one house, and I look at it, but it melts at once into others. Everything is so close. How can city people think with all these things to look at? Just see that funny cart! Why, there are real reindeer, like those I once saw in a circus.”

In the utmost satisfaction he contemplated her gleeful, laughing face. “Now,” he said, regretfully, “I must take you back to the hotel. You will not be lonely without me?”

“I shall not be lonely without you,” she said, with determination; but when they stood a little later in the middle of a huge mirror-lined reception-room, she looked askance at the big plush chairs holding out inviting arms to her, and faltered, “You will not be very long?”

He smiled in immense gratification, and to his further surprise received a voluntary caress and a pat on the shoulder, while she lisped, “’Steban, don’t let any of those things run over you.”

He stood waiting for an instant, a slight stealthy colour creeping to his face. But there were no further endearments for him. She was staring out the window with her round, childish eyes; and muttering, “Half a loaf is better than no bread,” he swung himself down-stairs and on to a street-car.

He did not see her again until the next morning. She was tired and had gone to bed was the message he received when he returned to the hotel.

Something in her appearance amused him as she came gliding down the long corridor, and he smiled a smile so broad that it threatened to degenerate into a grin. However, he controlled himself when she approached him, and said, politely, “Good morning, did you sleep well? You didn’t sleep at all!” he exclaimed, bringing her to a standstill, and putting an anxious finger on the dark semicircles under her eyes. “You were frightened to death in that great room.”

“I was not frightened. I didn’t sleep because I wanted to think,” she replied; “also I was very angry with a young boy.”

“What young boy?” he asked, cajolingly, as he drew her into a near writing-room to avoid a bevy of ladies on their way to the dining-room.

“A boy that came when I rang the bell.”

“A bell-boy. What did he do?”

“He called me ‘ma’am,’ and when I asked him what he meant he said, ‘Beg pardon, Mrs. Fordyce!’ How could you,—how dare you?”

Captain Fordyce suppressed his amusement. “Well, are you not Mrs. Fordyce?”

“No; you must not write me down your wife. I want to be Miss Danvers.”

“Have you no regard for my reputation, pussy-cat?”

“You said young ladies could travel with captains.”

“Yes, they can,” he said, soothingly, “but I prefer you to take the name that belongs to you. You are always crying honesty. What about sailing under false colours?”

“I think we had better have some breakfast,” she said, haughtily.

“Yes, Nina, but first go take off that red toggery.”

“My morning jacket,” she said, with annoyance, “my new morning jacket with the pinked edges. Mamma said it would be just the thing for breakfast.”

“For Rubicon Meadows, not for a city hotel.”

“I refuse to take it off. Mamma spent hours in making it.”

“Then I refuse to take breakfast with you, little green, country apple.”

“Whose fault is it that I am green?” she said, irritably. “Who has kept me mewed up in the country?”

“The best place for you, duckie. Go take off that jacket.”

“Oh, I am so disappointed in you. I am so sorry I left home. I thought men were nice and amiable when they were married. I thought they would let their wives do anything; and you said you lov—loved me!”

“So I do, sweetheart,” he said, soothingly; “but I don’t want to have people goggling at you. You are sensitive and nervous from yesterday, and your lack of sleep last night. You could not stand observation. Come back and show me what you have in the way of clothes. Your esteemed mother may know more about books than I do, but I bet you she doesn’t know so much about the fashions.”

With a proud and dignified air the girl led the way to her room. “There,” she said, throwing back her trunk lid, “you may see all I have. They’re mostly things you sent me, anyway.”

He rapidly tossed over every article of clothing submitted to him. “All very well for a maiden lady, not quite enough for a married one.”

“Will you stop?” she said, warningly. “I am not married.”

“Certainly, darling. Here—what’s the matter with this? This is what I call a blue silk blouse with a dash of gold for trimming. Natty, slightly nautical, and in good taste. Take off your red flannel jacket, and I will help you on with it.”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” she said, opening the door. “Go out into the hall.”

He stuffed his handkerchief in his mouth so that she would not hear him laughing, and, having attained to sobriety when she issued from the room a few minutes later, went soberly down the hall by the side of his disturbed young princess.

She thawed when they reached the big dining-room. “Shy, with all her bravado,” he muttered, watching her as she crept along in his wake. “Treats me like a dog when we are alone, and like a lord before strangers. It would pay to keep her in a crowd.”

She took but little breakfast, and once or twice volunteered remarks to him in a gentle and touchingly confidential tone. Her lips quivered several times, and his face darkened at the sight; for he knew she was thinking of her home and her uncertain parentage.

“Confusion to the brute that forced me to snatch her from that quiet place,” he reflected, with inward anger. “I wish I could see him squirm;” and his gaze went to those windows of the dining-room nearest the shores of distant England. Then he addressed Nina under his breath: “Darling, will you do some shopping with me before we go on board the Merrimac?”

“If you word that sentence properly, I will,” she returned, quietly.

“Miss Danvers, will you be kind enough to bestow the light of your countenance on me while I make a tour of the principal Boston stores?”

“Yes,” she replied, tranquilly, “I will.”

For several hours they went from store to store. He was hard to suit; and Nina was obliged to allow herself to be pinched, pulled, and fitted by obsequious dressmakers and their attendants, until at last her husband and guardian was satisfied. He put her in a hack; and the bewildered, interested, and slightly homesick girl found herself being rapidly driven through a noisy, dirty, and mysterious part of the city that at last, however, opened on a stretch of narrow blue water.

She uttered an exclamation of delight, and hung out the carriage window. They had rolled into an enormously long and vaulted shed in which bales of merchandise were piled as high as the roof. Some of these bales were flying wildly through the air, all, however, swinging in the direction of several black, open mouths in the hull of a huge steamer lying against the wharf outside. A number of light yellow boxes were also tumbling to and fro, these propelled by shouting men. The mad haste prevailing among animate and inanimate objects made Nina fall a prey to complete bewilderment, and she frantically clung to the strong arm that was to guide her through this sea of apparent confusion.

When they reached the gangway, a kind of paralysis seized her, and she was conscious of being lifted bodily and set down on a floor as clean as that of the scrubbed kitchens in Rubicon Meadows.

She was on the deck of ’Steban’s beloved Merrimac; and, gazing hurriedly about her, she took in the noble lines of a staunch and beautiful oceangoing steamer. But ’Steban had disappeared after a brief, “Show this lady to ninety-three;” and some one was waiting to conduct her down into the heart of this wonderful and mysterious thing. She meekly followed her guide, who was a smart boy in buttons, and presently she found herself alone and standing in front of a narrow red couch. She dropped on it, passed her hand over her eyes, and sat for a few minutes in blank contentment.

Then she began to reflect. She was quite alone in a tiny room not a quarter as large as her bedroom in Rubicon Meadows. She was very, very young. She had left her darling home and two people who adored her. She was going to sea with a monster whom she hated and could never, never live with. The passengers on the steamer would probably be fine city people who would despise her as a green country girl; but she did not care. She would wear her red jacket to breakfast every morning if she wished. They would probably all be shipwrecked and go down to the fishes. What did anything matter, anyway?

From blank despair she proceeded to a more active display of her emotions, and was soon violently weeping. She would cry now until she died. She was a poor, unfortunate lily, uprooted from her native soil. She was withering cruelly in this atmosphere of neglect. ’Steban might have spent at least five minutes with her on her arrival in this new and strange place, and she redoubled her “tear falling pity.”

However, at eighteen one cannot weep for ever, and after an hour had elapsed she sat up and began to review her situation. After all, it was not so very heartrending. How many girls in Rubicon Meadows would give their worldly all to be in her position,—Captain Fordyce and all her other woes included? And if she were too desperately unhappy on this dreaded voyage, and if she were to escape shipwreck, her home was always open to her,—her beloved home; and flinging herself excitedly from the couch she began to pace up and down the tiny room.

How well planned it was: two white berths, one red couch, a wash-stand and rack for glasses and brushes, and a big open port-hole encased by a shining brass rim. Oh, and a glass! and, hurrying to it, she examined with interest her tear-stained face. White skin, pink cheeks, fluffy auburn hair, hazel eyes, nose passable, and one row of white teeth. Further than that the liliputian mirror refused to go, and, with a smile at its absurdity in not taking in her chin and lower row of teeth, she resolved to have it more conveniently hung, and turned to her window.

There was a great rattling of ropes overhead and creaking of chains, a running to and fro, and a succession of whistles; and, surely now they were moving, actually moving. She would like to go on deck, but she would not venture alone. Well, she could see a section of the long wharf from here. It was gliding slowly from them. Surely it was moving, and the Merrimac was stationary. Some of the boxes and bales were left behind; the rearing, plunging horses were being driven away; the workmen were scattering; but here on the end of the wharf was a crowd of men and women, the air about them alive with waving handkerchiefs, hats describing eccentric circles in the air, and shouted parting injunctions; among which the invariable “Write soon” gallantly held its own against numerous odds.

There was no one to see her off, no one who cared for her. She did not even belong to the Danvers. She was probably a lonely orphan, and she again flung herself down on the red couch and buried her face in her hands.

CHAPTER V.
FELLOW SHIPS ON THE SEA OF LIFE.

Some hours passed, but Nina lay quiet and motionless. She had taken her troubles to dreamland; and, in a motley company, she sauntered through its pleasant shades until a shrill whistle from the deck pierced her sleepy brain and caused her to spring nervously to her feet.

She had been asleep. Well, she felt better for it. How delicious was the salt air! and she put her face to the port-hole. Now there was nothing but “water, water all around,” and, as the other line of the quotation came into her mind, she reflected that it was her supper-time, and that the strong sea air had made her fearfully and wonderfully hungry and thirsty. Should she reconnoitre? No, she would certainly lose her way in the labyrinth of passages. ’Steban would surely come to her rescue.

Simultaneously with the ringing of a bell there was a knock at her door.

She opened it and smiled as a fat stewardess gasped out the words, “Captain Fordyce wants to know—won’t you have—some dinner?”

“Won’t you sit down?” said the girl, hospitably. “Yes, I guess I’ll have some dinner. Isn’t it pretty late for it?”

“I reckon you’re from the country,” said the stewardess, dropping like a stone on the couch, that gave a low groan at her contact. “We don’t have supper till nine. Lunch is in the middle o’ the day.”

“Indeed,” said Nina, quietly.

“I hope you find everythin’ comfortable,” said the woman, gazing approvingly at the frank, pretty face bent on her. “It’s a blessing you ain’t goin’ to be sick. I see you with the capting. He don’t gen’rally bother with passengers. P’raps he knows your fam’ly.”

From Nina’s earliest recollection Captain Fordyce had been a forbidden subject of conversation; and she had been strictly warned not to mention his name outside her own home, so she responded, vaguely, that he was an old friend of her parents.

“He keeps—mostly to himself,” panted the stewardess. “He’s an odd man—is the capting. Kind of grouchy and queer. I guess he’s led a tough life. Hard work, few friends, little play. Do you fancy him, miss?”

“No,” Said Nina, rashly.

“No more did I at first,” said the woman, sympathetically. “It’ll come to you, miss. He’s got a soft spot under his hard shell. Many’s the good deed he does. The men all like him, though he’s a bit hard at first. I heard the second officer—he’s new to the ship—tell the doctor that he’s a reg’lar martin—martin—”

“Martinet,” suggested Nina.

“That’s it, miss, but I say it takes all kind o’ folks to make a world; and if the capting hasn’t got his lips smeared with honey, he knows fine how to work a ship. Come on, my dear young lady. The capting’ll think you’re not a-coming,” and she shuffled down a passage leading to the long, low dining-saloon.

She paused in the doorway, and Nina gave a quick sigh of appreciation. This saloon was infinitely more homelike than the huge hotel dining-room. The windows were all open to the evening air. Cheerful sunbeams streamed through them, lighted up the crimson-covered furniture, the snowy tables, and rejoiced the hearts of a number of yellow-throated canaries, who poured forth a continuous warble from cages half hidden in a bank of green ferns.

At the head of the table nearest the doorway sat a man in a black and gold uniform. The stewardess pointed to him. “Your seat is there, miss, next the capting.”

At the sound of her voice Captain Fordyce turned, and, seeing his young wife, rose and extended a hand. “Ah! here you are. I was afraid you had succumbed to seasickness.” Then twirling around a chair next his own, he said: “This is your place.”

His manner was conventional, and overcome by it and the uniform, that was quite a new thing to her, Nina subsided into her seat with a pretty blushing stare; then, dropping her eyes, looked at the dainty buttonhole bouquet in the centre of her elaborately folded napkin. The rosebud and sprig of heliotrope seemed like old friends blown her from the garden at home, and, gently putting them to her face, she looked around to see what the other ladies were doing with theirs. They were fastening them in their dresses. She imitated them, then taking up the menu beside her plate she read in bewilderment its comprehensive contents.

The tall steward standing behind her chair breathed a soft little sigh; thus admonished of her duty, she hastily found the soups, and, running her eye over the different kinds, said, “Tomato.”

In a trice he reappeared with it. As she picked up her spoon Captain Fordyce said, inquiringly:

“So you are not going to be ill?”

“I have been ill, dreadfully ill,” said the girl, innocently, “but I have got quite over it now.”

“And we are just three hours out of port,” he remarked, in a quiet, amused fashion. “Allow me to congratulate you on the celerity with which you have vanquished the foe to enjoyment of life at sea. I hope my other passengers may be equally fortunate.”

Not feeling inclined for conversation, Nina let this remark pass. Captain Fordyce looked away from her down the crowded tables, then said to a lady on his left hand, “You asked about the weather, Mrs. Grayley. I prophesy that there won’t be a score of people at these tables to-morrow.”

She uttered a disturbed exclamation. “Are we going to have it rough?”

He gave her a curtly polite, “Yes.” It was not his habit to talk much. He preferred to listen. This she seemed to divine, and forthwith poured out an animated stream of babble on the probability of their having bad weather during their voyage to England.

For several courses Nina was left to herself, and occupied the time by studying the passenger list and making a careful examination of the faces about her. She avoided the head of the table. The features of the man sitting there were as well-known to her as her own, although this evening his uniform did seem to give him a strange unfamiliarity of aspect.

The lady to whom he was talking looked forty or thereabout, though she was chattering in a babyish way that Nina, in spite of her youth, could scarcely emulate. Her face was unattractive,—a combination of faded beauty and silliness; but one only and beautiful charm she possessed, namely, her hands. They were wonderfully white and pretty, and she made them do extra duty by keeping her elbows on the table the greater part of the time.

Nina’s eyes wandered from Mrs. Grayley to her neighbour, a tall, plain-featured man whose benevolent blue eyes chastened the warlike aspect of his immense blond moustache and aquiline nose. Under his right eyebrow was a gold-rimmed glass; and while she covered it with a prolonged stare, she gathered from his conversation that he was an officer in an English regiment, and that he had been making a tour of the principal American cities.

Suddenly he met her glance, and, wrinkling his forehead, let his glass fall with a click on the shiny buttons of his coat, with the effect of making her start slightly. As he was looking at her, her occupation in his direction was gone; so she glanced cautiously at his left-hand neighbour, who had not yet got beyond the entrées, and was obstinately demanding something that the menu did not contain, and yet that he thought he had discovered there.

Nina in awed wonderment gazed at the expanse of red throat presented, as the determined man twisted his head to remonstrate with the steward. This was a real live English knight, Sir Hervey Forrest. She should be quite frightened of him. He had a round, thick head, bristling gray hairs, pompous figure, and overpowering manner. Surely he should have had the chief seat at the table,—he and his wife, the gray, smooth, elegant, distinguished little mouse beside him, who rarely opened her mouth, except to put food in it in the daintiest way possible. Their names headed the passenger list at least, and Nina was just reading them over again, when a growl from the knight caught her attention.

He had come off second best in the dispute with the steward, and was now addressing her husband. “You, sir,—you ought to have your bills of fare printed. Your passengers, sir, get lost in this maze of writing.”

Nina trembled, and gazed apprehensively at Captain Fordyce, who was coolly surveying the inflamed face turned toward him.

“We don’t carry a printing-press, sir. The company has expense enough in other ways.”

“Haven’t you got a typewriter, sir? Haven’t you got a typewriter?” spluttered the disturbed man.

“I believe we have,” returned Captain Fordyce. “Merdyce,” and he addressed his own servant who stood behind his chair, “ask the chief steward to have Sir Hervey Forrest’s menu typewritten to-morrow.”

The knight was enraged. He had attained to his present high position from a comparatively low origin. There were enough jokes at his expense floating about now to keep him in constant irritation. In addition, the impression would get out that he could only decipher the most legible handwriting. “I don’t want a menu typewritten for me alone, sir,” he stammered; “have them done for all the passengers.”

Captain Fordyce, usually impatient and scornful with bickering, faultfinding passengers, was now intensely entertained, owing to the fact that Miss Brighteyes was hanging on his every word and look, and was breathlessly watching every turn of the dispute.

“Only as they request them, Sir Hervey,” he said, good-naturedly. “Do I understand you to say you revoke your request?”

Lady Forrest murmured something in a low voice to her choleric spouse, and he flung himself over his plate. “Let it go, sir, let it go. Your menu is a slovenly thing, but I prefer it as it is.”

“Merdyce,” said Captain Fordyce, turning to his servant with an imperturbable air, “do not tell the chief steward to typewrite a menu for Sir Hervey Forrest to-morrow.”

Nina exchanged a smile with her husband, then stole a quiet glance across the vacant chair on her right hand. Beyond the chair sat a young man; and she was quite well aware of the fact that, while she had been taken up with a survey of the other people at the table, he had been throwing her a number of scrutinising glances across the red plush seat. Now she looked stealthily at him. Heretofore her acquaintance with men had been extremely limited. In les affaires du cœur she would prove a formidable rival to Molière’s Agnes, but that had not prevented her from forming several theories with regard to the stronger sex. They had no right to be as handsome as women, that she firmly believed; yet, notwithstanding her preconceived opinion, a feeling of admiration stole over her as she surveyed the manly beauty of the tall, graceful form next her; and she half-impatiently acknowledged to herself that he eclipsed by far the most beautiful woman that she had ever seen.

His eyelids’ “black and silken fringe” was drooping on the “vermil tinge” of his cheek, as he gazed thoughtfully at his plate. Something pleasing must be passing through his mind, for soon he smiled faintly, and she caught a glimpse of glittering white teeth through the heavy black of his moustache. He had the full, distinct, and well-proportioned lips that, according to Lavater, designate a character hostile to falsehood, villainy, and baseness, but with a propensity to pleasure!

The infatuating nature of the science of physiognomy had led the girl to study intently a Lavater that she one day found among some old books belonging to Mrs. Danvers. Accordingly, she pieced out for her neighbour a character that she hoped she might have the satisfaction of finding to be correct. He was not wanting in the perpendicular incisions between the eyebrows that evidenced strength of mind, nor in the energy-portending black eyes. His horizontal eyebrows denoted a masculine and vigorous character, and the broad, square forehead, a strong memory.

She was just trying to decide whether his chin meant coolness of temper or extreme good nature, when she heard, in a dry tone, “A penny for your thoughts.”

She looked up and found that Captain Fordyce’s deep, dark-pupilled eyes were turned on her with an expression almost of displeasure.

“I have asked you twice for the walnuts,” he went on, “yet you dream away as if you were alone in a desert.”

“So I am alone in a dessert,” she said, mischievously, as she put the dish within his reach.

He shook his head at her, then applied himself to his nuts. Nina tried to be less absent-minded, but she took no part in the animated conversation kept up by the most of the passengers. She did not scrutinise any more of them. Their number bewildered her. She would attack the remainder to-morrow; and there was another wave of homesickness passing over her. She dropped the bunch of raisins she had just taken, threw down her napkin, and left the table.

While she was hurriedly trying to find her way to her room, she heard a step behind her, and a remark in her husband’s deep voice: “I am on my way to see the other young lady that I have in charge. She is ill already, but I think I can persuade her to spend the evening in the chart-room. I have some writing to do. Perhaps you will come and help me entertain her. It will be pleasanter for you than sitting alone or among all these strangers.”

“I—I don’t think I would do her any good,” stammered Nina, plaintively.

“What about misery and company?”

She reluctantly made a gesture of consent, and Captain Fordyce continued, “Let us go to ninety-three and get a wrap, so you may have a walk before going to bed.”

“I thought you didn’t like red,” observed Nina, coldly, when he stepped out of her room holding a brilliant-hued cloak.

“For a wrap, yes,” he remarked, folding it over his arm. “It is just the thing for youth and beauty, and gives a glow to your travelling frock. It also reminds me of Rubicon Meadows,—you remember you used to wear it there?”

Yes, she remembered it; but she made no reply, and silently followed him up a companionway, and past the deck-cabins to a little room just under the bridge. It was a tiny place, but exceedingly cosy. Crimson curtains hung before the door and the two small windows; the walls were lined with mirrors, pictures, and different kinds of nautical instruments that to Nina’s inexperienced eyes looked like mouse-traps. A large lamp covered by a rose shade shed a soft, subdued light over everything.

“How delightfully comfortable!” she exclaimed, her displeasure suddenly leaving her.

Captain Fordyce pulled forward an armchair, and with a pleased smile ran down the steps to the deck. Presently he came back. “Miss Marsden is horribly sick, and hopes we may all go to the bottom before morning.”

“Poor girl!” said Nina, compassionately. “Can I do anything for her?”

“No; she has her maid and the stewardess.”

“A maid—all to herself?”

“Yes, she has plenty of money.”

“Where does she come from?”

“Boston.”

“What is she going to England for?”

“Love-sickness,—to cure it. Her mother told me that she had been jilted. She is going to visit relatives in London.”

“What a mean man!” exclaimed Nina. Then she added, sentimentally, “She will forget him,

“‘For love fares hardly on ingratitude;

And love dies quickly nurtured by deceit;

And love turns hatred captured by a cheat.’”

Captain Fordyce listened in an attention so fascinated and so flattering that Nina thought well to turn his thoughts in another direction, and therefore asked, shrewdly, “Was that nobleman mad because he couldn’t sit by you at dinner?”

“I guess he was, Miss New England,” said her husband, with a sigh, “but he is not a nobleman.”

“He has a title.”

“He was knighted on the occasion of some royal celebration. He was a mayor of a Cheshire city at the time,—made his money in coal.”

“Isn’t he a bloated aristocrat?”

“No.”

“Then if he is only bloated without the aristocrat I sha’n’t be afraid of him. Why didn’t you let him sit beside you?”

“Because he didn’t apply in time. Those that get their names in first get the best seats. I am not going to have exceptions made for Sir Hervey Forrest or any other person.”

“I didn’t apply for my seat.”

“I was looking out for you.”

“It is good for every woman to have some man to attend to business matters for her,” said the girl, sententiously.

“Is that the only path of usefulness you would lay out for mankind?”

“Oh, no,” she replied, carelessly, “they can carry parcels, and get you through a crowd, and not talk foolishness when you want silence. Where did that bloater get his nice little gray herring?”

“If you mean Lady Forrest, she was a milliner’s pretty apprentice, I believe, in her early days. She seems a ladylike woman, though, more ballast than he has.”

“That is a very beautiful young man next me,” said Nina, earnestly. “Do you know who he is?”

“No; don’t want to. A regular tailor’s figure.”

“What is his name?”

“Delessert; now please stop your charming gabble and let me work,” and, whirling around his chair toward the table, he occupied himself in scribbling queer figures like hieroglyphics, the meaning of which Nina was unable to determine. She leaned back on her cushions and indulged in sweet idleness. Presently Captain Fordyce’s gold-rimmed cap caught her dreamy, wandering eye. To glance from it to its owner was a natural thing. She lazily surveyed his face through her half-shut eyelids. What an air of command he carried. If she were a sailor she would be afraid to disobey the slightest order coming from that determined mouth; but, not being a sailor,—she laughed so distinctly that she feared he heard her. But he did not. His mind was fully taken up with his writing, and, seeing this, she closed her eyes and gave herself up to a retrospect of the exciting and fatiguing events of the last two days.

CHAPTER VI.
LET US MAKE A NEW BEGINNING.

Suddenly a seeming trumpet voice broke in upon her slumbers. She started, and half rose from her chair.

“Eh! what?” she cried, crossly, “no, I am not asleep; why do you roar at me in that fashion?”

“I spoke in an ordinary tone of voice,” said Captain Fordyce, quietly.

“Did you?” she said, confusedly, “I must have been dreaming.”

“Yes, you were asleep. You sat thinking for a long time, then your eyes closed, and you dropped off.”

She glanced sharply at him. He was about to enter upon his favourite topic of conversation, namely, herself, and, anxious to get him off such dangerous ground, she pointed beyond him, and said, hurriedly, “I love the sea when it looks like that.”

The curtains were looped back, and the doorway framed for them a charming picture,—a stretch of the deepest, darkest, bluest sea imaginable, and over it a moon new and radiant, set in a sky studded with brightly twinkling stars. As Captain Fordyce turned and looked over his shoulder, a small cloud dragged its white fleece across the silver crescent.

“See what it is to have an evil eye,” he said, half aloud; “at one glance from me the scene changes.”

Nina knew little of the dark side of his nature, and, touched by the suppressed bitterness of his tone, she felt it incumbent on her to say something to comfort him.

“You have not an evil eye, ’Steban. You have a good eye, and people like you,—your sailors, too.”

He suddenly turned his gaze from the starry sky to her. “Who told you that?”

“Oh, some one,” she replied, evasively.

“That old gossip of a stewardess?”

Nina would not tell him, and he bent his head to conceal the quick, gratified flush that overspread his face.

“What time is it?” asked the girl, rising. “I must go to bed.”

“Not late,” he answered, idly, snapping the shabby silver case of his watch.

“Tell me exactly.”

“Half-past eight.”

“Oh, it must be later; I believe it is later,” and she came and looked over his shoulder. “Story-teller! it is half-past nine. Please hand me my cloak.”

He watched with the utmost interest her transformation from a damsel clad in a sober travelling suit to the gayest, most vivid of Red Riding Hoods. Then he said, with sober admiration: “You would not have that lily and rose complexion, Nina, if it were not for your early hours.”

Annoyed by the broadness of his compliment and the mention of her Christian name, that she suddenly considered a breach of compact, she flashed him an indignant, remonstrating glance, while tying the ribbons of her cape.

“May I assist you?” he asked, coming toward her.

Her mouth opened to refuse his offer, but he closed it by stooping down and lightly imprinting a kiss on her lips. Her first sentiment was one of unmitigated wonder. Then stepping back against the wall, she stared at him in anger complete and undisguised.

“I could not help it, Red Riding Hood,” he said, with a deprecatory gesture. “It is that Rubicon Meadows cloak. I am sure you won’t blame me when you look in the glass and see how fascinating you are.”

His light tone aggravated the extent of his transgression; and with cheeks on fire and in a suffocated voice she stammered: “How dare you do so? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

He had not heard her. His two hands were gently laid on her shoulders, and in a voice of ineffable tenderness he was repeating under his breath, “My little wife, my little wife.”

Nina was frightened, confused, and tried to push his hands away, but he quietly restrained her. “Darling,—since those solemn words were spoken over us yesterday,—is there a difference?”

“Yes—no,” she stammered, wildly. Then as he still caressed her, and regarded her with the new, strange expression that fascinated and yet repelled her, she exclaimed, wildly: “’Steban, don’t, oh, don’t, don’t. Don’t be serious. Please let me go. I do not love you, really. Not enough to live with you all the time. Don’t say such things to me. I am in earnest. I am.”

He stared sadly at the hand she had caught and was holding in both her own, then he drew it from her and turned to the doorway.

“I don’t blame you,” she whispered against his shoulder; “but you must not speak in that way to me. You make me frantic. I suppose it was the cloak.”

“Yes, it was the cloak,” he said, quietly. “I beg your pardon, Nina. It was certainly the cloak.”

“I will take it off,” she said, hurriedly, and she threw it across her arm.

“Little goose,” and he wrapped it over her shoulders, tied it under her chin, then in his old brotherly manner drew the hood over her head and tucked in the curls that had always held out a fluttering temptation to him when his little sweetheart donned the cloak to stroll with him to the gate of the Rubicon Meadows house.

“Now,” he said, drawing aside the curtains, “let me escort you to your room.”

Nina did not know why a mist of tears suddenly floated before her eyes. Stumbling blindly out, she made a false step, and would have fallen, save for the protecting arm thrown around her. By the time they reached the deck she was speechless, and, drawing her arm through his own, Captain Fordyce walked toward the companion. There he paused in order that she might step over the high, brass-covered threshold of the door.

The careless debonair face of her handsome neighbour at dinner appeared. Seeing her, he took his cigar from his mouth, and lifted his cap as he passed. Captain Fordyce wrinkled his forehead slightly, and said in her ear, “Come for a walk. It will make you sleep better.”

Nina made a faint, convulsive effort to withdraw her arm from his. Without avail, however, for he did not perceive it, and drew her out on the deck again with a muttered, “It has got as dark as a pocket. I don’t like the way those clouds are gathering.”

There was no response to his remark, and for several minutes they paced in silence up and down the quarter-deck. “You are not talking,” he said, at last; “are you tired or in the doldrums?”

Their promenade had ceased, and they were standing by the stern rail looking down at the phosphorescent waves below. His seriousness was all gone, and in a jocular tone he ejaculated, “Doldrums it is!”

Nina was staring down at the churning, foaming mass around the angry screw. She, too, was trying to lash herself into a rage, but her effort was not as successful as that of the bit of machinery below; and it was in a weak and unstable voice that she murmured, “You have broken your promise.”

“What promise, darling?” It was very dark in the corner where they were standing, and he drew her closer and whispered the words in her ear.

“That—that you would be a stranger to me,” she whispered back.

He laughed immoderately. “You queer child!”

“You did,” she said, faintly; “yesterday on the bridge you said if I would come you would be careful. Nobody would suspect our relation to each other.”

“Nobody will know from me. I am propriety, reticence itself, when there is any one about. Only when we are alone will I give you a chance to snub me.”

“But you promised for all the time.”

“Pardon me, darling, I did not. In all the long list of things you made me swear not to do in the presence of strangers, there was not a word said about my behaviour when we were alone.”

Nina was staggered. “Didn’t I?” she gasped. “That is why you are so bad. What a simpleton I am! Let me go to bed.”

“All right, you dear, little, bad-tempered thing. My only wish is to please you,” and he released her arm and drew his cigar-case from his pocket.

A near lamp threw a lurid glare over his swarthy features, but her figure was completely in the shadow. To his surprise, she did not disappear with an abusive sentence. She still lingered, and, drawing nearer him, she stood for a minute in deepest thought. Then she took him gingerly by the coat sleeve, and whispered, in faintly audible tones, “’Steban!”

“Yes, darling,” he muttered, holding his breath as he bent down to the animated face now glowing with some sudden and exquisite emotion.

“I want to tell you what is in my mind.”

“Just what I would like to hear,” he uttered, in the same cautious way.

“You know I haven’t been brought up like other girls.”

“Just like thousands of other sweet country girls, darling.”

“You know what I mean,” she murmured, not pettishly, but with angelic forbearance. “I mean about you. Most girls aren’t tied to a man as I have been.”

“You could have broken your bonds at any time.”

“So you have told me,” she said, with the faintest flash of indignation; “but how could I? Had I no gratitude?—and I don’t like the boys at home. They are not as clever as you.”

He suppressed a delighted chuckle.

“And I expect some day that I shall get to be very fond of you—very fond, ’Steban.”

“Heaven hasten the day,” he muttered.

“But, ’Steban, if I take my own way about it the day will come quicker.”

“Then take it by all means, darling.”

“Now, I’ll tell you just what I think,” she went on, resting one hand on his breast, and staring more earnestly into his face: “I’m a free-born American, and you are one half English and the other half Spanish.”

“Bless her,” he reflected with inward perturbation, “if she only knew!”

“And I have independent ways, and your European style of treating women doesn’t suit me.”

“What style is it, darling, if I may ask?”

“A kind of lordly style. You seem to think, ‘This woman is mine. I can do what I like with her.’”

“A vile style, sweetheart,—a much-to-be-condemned style, quite unknown in America.”

“Now, as I say, if you will do as I tell you, you may make me think a great deal of you in a very short time. I want to put you back in your proper position. You see I have known you too long, and you have known me too well. You must try to be meek and humble like a gentleman just getting acquainted with me; and you must always try to please me and not order me about. Don’t say, ‘Come for a walk.’ Say, ‘Won’t you be kind enough to take a little stroll with me?’”

“Very well, darling. Won’t you be kind enough to take a little stroll with me?”

“Not this evening, Captain Fordyce,” she responded, graciously. “Perhaps to-morrow morning. Now another thing. Don’t take too much notice of me. Let me hear your praises from other people. Sometimes you brag a little about the way you run a ship.”

“I never do,” he said, hastily.

“Yes, ’Steban,” she said, very gently, but with decision. “Once or twice when the company gave you a bonus.”

He was silent, and she went on. “We will be extremely formal with each other, and, if you can bring yourself to it, I wish you would call me Miss Danvers when we are alone. I will call you Captain Fordyce, and pretend that I only got acquainted with you yesterday. I hope no one on the steamer knows that we are married. What are you shivering for?”

“A fly bit me,” he said, mendaciously.

“Then,” she continued, “insensibly and by degrees I shall become attached to you. By the time we reach England, I shall be a little bit in love with you. I hope you will send me away off to some place like London, where I can write long letters to you. You will reply to them; then, after a time, I shall be frantically in love with you just like Juliet with Romeo, and I shall not be able to live without you.”

“Glory to Shakespeare, darling!” he said, rapturously, and he embraced her.

“But we must begin at once,” she said, gravely, unwinding his arm from her waist. “We have lost too much time already. I wish you good night, Captain Fordyce.”

“I wish you good night, Miss Danvers,” and he took her in his arms.

She struggled away from him. “You deceitful creature!”

“But we were not to begin fooling till to-morrow. I distinctly understood that.”

“I am beginning to-night,” she said, gravely; and, sweeping him a curtsey, she endeavoured to walk in a stilted fashion down the deck, but was obliged to break into an undignified run because he was pursuing her.

Upon arriving in her room, she found the “fair, fat, and forty” stewardess there with an armful of clean towels.

“You’ve come to bed, miss—that is, mem. I beg pardon, I’m sure. I didn’t know this afternoon as how you was the capting’s bride. I was took all aback. I don’t know when anything has upset me so.”

In disturbed surprise Nina fastened an earnest look on a spot on the door just over the woman’s head.

“Nobody thought as how he’d marry; but he’s just the one to up and do it and say nothin’. It not bein’ nobody’s business, and nobody could tell by his actions. He’s not one to care much about women. But as I said—I beg pardon, and it’ll not occur again.”

Nina was still unresponsive, and the woman, anxious to please her, rambled on. “I guess the whole ship’s as glad as I am. The boys would like to do somethin’.”

“I forbid it,” said Nina, hurriedly.

“All right, mem. We all see you’re somethin’ young and shy. I’m sure I wish you fortune, mem. You’ve drawed a prize in the lottery.”

“Does—does everybody know?” stammered Nina.

“Yes, mem,” said the woman, cheerfully. “That is, all the ship’s company. The passengers wouldn’t occupy themselves so much with it, but they’ll soon find out. You’ll get lots of attention, mem, bein’ the capting’s bride.”

“I don’t want it,” she said, quickly. “I—I think I am going to be seasick.”

“I hope not, mem. Shall I help you undress?”

“No, thank you.”

“And you don’t like the capting’s rooms on deck,” said the woman, rolling her eyes around the tiny apartment. She was bursting with curiosity, but Nina did not see it. “Was you afraid?” she went on when no reply was vouchsafed her.

“Yes,” said Nina, miserably.

“It’s safer here in storms. Let me unfasten that collar.”

“I don’t want you to touch me. I don’t feel well. I’ve got a dreadful pain.”

“A pain, mem,—where is it?”

“In my side. Please go away.”

The stewardess’s good-humour, preserved through a long course of waiting on querulous and seasick women, was not to be upset. “Shall I call the capting, mem?”

“No,” said Nina, decidedly, and she opened the door for her. “I’ve had too much excitement to-day. I must be alone.”

“Married him for his money,” soliloquised the woman as she sidled along the passage. “Country girl—parents made her. Don’t like him—Oh, sir! beg pardon!”

She had almost collided with Mr. Delessert. He favoured her with a glimpse of his beautiful white teeth, then he said, as she was about to pass him, “Stewardess, can you tell me the name of that pretty girl who sat next the captain at dinner?”

“She’s his wife, sir.”

“His wife!” he echoed, in faint skepticism.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did he tell you so?”

“No, sir; he don’t have no conversation with us. Her name ain’t on the list. Jim—he’s the head cook’s boy—he was up to the office just afore we started, mailin’ a package for me. One of the clerks says to him, ‘So Capting Sunshine’s got married.’ That’s the name they give him ’cause he’s so glum. Jim, he gasped, but the clerk showed him the sailin’ list. Last name was Mrs. Fordyce, room ninety-three. You see, sir, the company’s particular. The captings ain’t allowed to carry wives only once in so often.”

Mr. Delessert was listening politely, but with no great show of interest. However, when she finished, he drawled, in a languid way, “Do you know what Mrs. Fordyce’s name was before she was married?”

“No, sir, but I could find out.”

“Do so, I beg,” and he slipped something into her hand, and passed on.

The woman, flattered at being addressed by so handsome a young man, approvingly pressed the piece of money in her hand. “He’s as pretty as a picture. I guess the capting’s bride must remind him of some one he knows.”

CHAPTER VII.
WE ARE PROGRESSING.

Early the next morning Nina, refreshed and blooming from her night’s sleep, made her way to the deck. She frowned, however, at the bridge, the centre of her husband’s authority, and, in order to get as far as possible from it, drew a camp-stool to a secluded corner by the wheel-house.

The sea was very rough, and the Merrimac was rolling and pitching in the huge swell, until the girl, in her inexperience, feared that the steamer would forget herself during one of her side-to-side plunges, and turn quite over.

She fixed her eyes on a white sail in the distant horizon. Just as a high, over-topping wave hid it from her view, she heard a heavy footstep behind her.

Involuntarily she clasped the rail more tightly with her bare hands. Yes, it was his grave voice, asking some question of an officer who stood beside the man at the wheel.

She stared steadfastly at the stormy petrels circling in graceful evolutions against the gray, dull sky, till some one came behind her, and she heard a formal and decorous, “Good morning, Miss Danvers. Will you be kind enough to take a stroll with me?”

With a silent shrug of her shoulders, she kept her attention riveted on the petrels.

“Did I not begin right? Well, then—The top of the morning to you, darling.”

He was close beside her now, and his dark face was so near her own that she instinctively shrank away.

His eyebrows contracted, and, putting his brown hand over her clenched white ones, he said, “You may take cold sitting there. Come for a walk.”

Sorely against her will she rose, and, by way of showing her displeasure, refused his proffered arm. He threw a meaning glance at the decks that seemed to be abandoning the horizontal and striving for the perpendicular, and the next instant Nina found herself dashed in a forlorn heap at the foot of a large deck compass.

Captain Fordyce sprang to her aid, and, as he picked her up, put her cap on her curls again, with the words, “Poor child, have you hurt yourself?”

Nina gave him a faint, “No.” Drawing her now unresisting arm through his own, he walked down the long decks, clean and wet from a recent scrubbing, past the bridge and the portion of the ship allotted to the second cabin passengers. When they came to the steerage quarters, Nina turned away her head to avoid a puff of hot air that swept up the narrow opening. A pale-faced woman with a baby in her arms struggled on deck. She unwittingly crossed the dividing line between her portion of the ship and that belonging to the richer, more favoured class.

Captain Fordyce’s eyes rested on her, and he nodded slightly to one of the ship’s officers who happened to be passing. It did not escape Nina. She saw the woman sent back, and pitied the weary look on her face, as she quietly retraced her steps.

“Please let me speak to her for a moment,” she said to her companion.

He released her, and hurrying back she put her hand in her pocket. There was no money there. She had left her purse in her room. She drew a little gay silk handkerchief from the breast of her coat, and, pressing it between the woman’s thin fingers, told her to twist it around the baby’s neck.

The woman’s white lips murmured a blessing, and, with tears in her eyes, Nina turned toward the prow of the ship. Had she incurred the Grand Turk’s displeasure? and she anxiously scanned his face as he guided her steps over a huge anchor lying on the deck.

It softened perceptibly. “Order must be maintained on a ship, Nina, or everything would run to confusion. We could not have all the different classes of passengers scrambling about together.”

“Of course not, but you might have spoken to that poor woman yourself.”

“That would not be ship etiquette, and, moreover, you must remember that a man who has knocked about the world as much as I have cannot be expected to have the sensibilities of a boarding-school miss.”

“That is no excuse,” she said, rebukingly. “One person is as good as another. You ought to be as kind to that woman as you are to me. Whether you feel like it or not—” Then a thought of her own shortcomings brought her to a sudden stop.

“You little prig, I am not as hard-hearted as you think. I am sorry for that woman, but what can I do? Money it would not be wise to give her, sympathy I cannot express as you did just now. Don’t you see,” eagerly, “that is just what I want you for, or, rather, one of the things I want you for. A kind-hearted, charitable little wife, what a help she would be to me!”

Nina made no reply, and, holding out a hand, he assisted her in clambering to the bow of the ship, immediately over the figured maiden who stood night and day with hands clasped on her breast, and the cold waves lapping her bare, white feet.

A sense of exultation came over the girl as they went down to the depths and then seemed to rise to the sky. The wind cut her face like a scourge, and the salt spray dashed high over her head; but with her eye embracing the boundless expanse, she felt that she could stand for ever gazing at the angry waste of waters. She had even begun to con over all the sea-poetry that she could remember, when her mind was recalled to her present surroundings by hearing the man at her side say, “Why did you not put on that pretty red cloak this morning?”

She turned rebukingly around. He was looking at her with his usual air of calm proprietorship. She could do nothing with him. He would not be formal. He would not be indifferent. And there was no one in sight. The decks were as desolate as the sea.

“There are disagreeable, exceedingly disagreeable memories connected with that cloak now,” she said, haughtily.

“Specify the memories, birdie.”

She would not gratify him, and he went on, softly, “Memories of home and affection: and there are so many lonely people in the world.”

She would not answer him. Her eyes were persistently fixed on the distracted waves, torn and buffeted, and hurled from the embrace of the strange white maiden crossing their path.

He changed his tone. “You are in a temper, birdie, your eyes are glittering, and there are angry dashes of red in your cheeks, and you are trembling like a little, frightened dove, or a very successful young actress. Which is it,—dove or actress?”

She burst out upon him with a question. “What are you running about the ship for, telling everybody that I am your wife?”

He suppressed his astonishment, and for some time contemplated her in silence. Then he asked in a low voice, for some emigrant children had suddenly appeared near them, clambering over the anchor and tumbling over each other, “Nina, what do you suppose was the last thought in my mind when I turned into my berth at one this morning?”

“I don’t know—I don’t care to know,” she said, warningly.

“I thought, ‘My little girl is down below.’ When you look out at this,” and he waved his hand toward the vast surging expanse beyond, “and realise the awful loneliness of it, you can in part imagine what that thought was to me.”

Nina shuddered, and uttered a feeble, “Don’t!”

“Other men have homes, wives, children,” he went on, in the same peculiar voice; “ordinarily, I have nothing.”

“You have me,” she said, wildly, “’Steban, don’t talk so.”

He put up a hand to check her increasing tones. “You,” he murmured, “what are you? A sight, a glimpse, a breath,—an unsubstantial nothing. Are you not planning to leave me in a few days?”

“I will come back. I will surely come back.”

“You will never come back. There are other men in the world. You will fall in love with one of them and forget me.”

“I shall not forget you,” she said, passionately.

The children heard her and stared, but this time her husband did not repress her. He could not afford to lose one glimpse into the girlish soul unfolding so surely.

“Nina,” he said, quietly, “perhaps I ought to release you. It is only a question of a few years,” and he nodded toward the ocean; “it is always waiting. I shall be swallowed up some time. Then you can be happy with some other man.”

He had not frightened her. He had gone too far, and her suddenly pale face resumed its natural colour. “It is not like you to give things up,” she said, simply, “and I believe you will outlive me, but—”

“But what?” he asked, eagerly.

“But I wish you would not talk in that way,” she said, composedly.

“In what way?”

“About dying—and other men.”

“Why not?”

“It is too much of a pleasure to me,” she said, roguishly. “It suggests things that will never happen.”

He smiled happily. He, in his turn, could not be deceived. She had grown white; she had been frightened; she had swept with one terrified glance the hungry ocean, and with another loving, faithful one his expectant face. He had seen in her eyes the expression he wished to cultivate, and he laughed aloud in his content.

“Oh, you are so provoking,” she said, biting her lip. “You will not stay where I put you. You are so aggressive. You promised everything last evening; this morning you are detestable. We are just where we were before.”

“Softly, darling, those children are gaping, and we are not standing still. We are progressing.”

“Progressing—progressing; we are going back!” she said, impatiently.

“Give me your hand,” he said, abruptly, “we will have a run to restore your good-humour.”

Swiftly he rushed her down the long decks, till, panting and breathless, they leaned against a door, and she echoed his recent laughter. She could not help it. His drooping head and hand on his heart were so irresistibly comical, and in such amusing contrast to his usually dignified deportment.

“That’s good,” he remarked, approvingly; “it is worth a kingdom to see your face light up in that way. Now will it please your ladyship to continue merry and to have some breakfast?”

Nina followed him to the dining-saloon. On entering it he said: “No ladies this morning; just what I predicted. Mrs. Grayley is not, Lady Forrest is not, only a handful of men at the table. So if you open your obstinate little mouth you will have to talk to me, Red Riding Hood.”

Nina silently took her place with Captain Eversleigh opposite her, and Mr. Delessert next her. She would feel very lonely without any members of her own sex, and as for the staring eyes of that red lobster, Sir Hervey Forrest, she would not meet them. So she shyly kept her head bent over her plate until forced to lift it by the prolonged catastrophe of breakfast.

The heavy pitching of the Merrimac caused the dishes to slide gracefully from one end of the table to the other. However, by way of change, the ship occasionally abandoned the rising and falling motion, and, taking a sudden and unexpected roll, caused a number of the articles on the table to jump frantically over the guards and precipitate themselves into the passengers’ laps.

When Captain Eversleigh received fair in the chest a loaf of bread that sent his eye-glass dashing through the air and thoroughly upset his usual British equanimity, Nina gave vent to her feelings of amusement by indulging in a burst of uncontrollable girlish laughter.

The subject of her amusement glanced benevolently at her, and the other semi-seasick, preoccupied, and grumbling men at the table listened appreciatively to the sound of the fresh, clear young voice, some of them even joining in with her.

Captain Fordyce looked on, well pleased to have her admired, but suddenly exclaimed: “Take care, Nina Stephana!”

Two cruet-stands came clattering down from the rack overhead, and, spinning about “quick and more quick in giddy gyres,” shed at last ruin and desolation over Mr. Delessert and herself.

In spite of receiving half the contents of a bottle of sauce on his black head, Mr. Delessert looked inquiringly at her through the dark brown streams of the condiment pouring down each side of his Grecian nose.

“A saucy stare,” muttered Captain Fordyce, while Nina, on whom his utterance of her Christian name had made no impression, answered her neighbour’s incredulous and, to her, incomprehensible glance by a suppressed laugh, as she slipped from her seat to follow his example of retiring to perform necessary ablutions.

“You are only a trifle devastated,” said Captain Fordyce, rising too, and taking one napkin after another that his servant hastily handed him to whisk off her shoulders. “You need not go away. Your gown is not injured.”

Nina dropped into her seat again, and continued her occupation of rolling her brown eyes around the room. The skylights were closed, the canaries were mute, and as breakfast progressed the agitation of the Merrimac increased. The wind whistled outside, every timber in the ship creaked in response. Collisions between the stewards were of frequent occurrence, with the result of black forms in brass buttons stretched forlornly on the floor, reaching out helpless arms toward their late burdens, that slipped aggravatingly under the tables and chairs and into the most obscure holes and corners of the room.

Two of the swinging lamps fell with a crash, and from a distant pantry came at intervals such loud reports of smashing dishes that Captain Fordyce began to frown in a heavy, displeased way.

The absurdity of his annoyance seemed so evident to Nina that she went off into another fit of laughter, in which he partially joined, while the quaking stewards threw her glances of gratitude.

After breakfast Captain Fordyce remarked, regretfully, “I am going to be busy, but I can provide occupation for you. Will you go and console Miss Marsden?”

Nina hung back. “I don’t want to. She is probably some fashionable girl.”

“I’ll wager there isn’t a society item in her head now. Come and see her,” and, seizing her gently resisting hand, he assisted her down the passage to a room not far from her own.

Nina with concealed awe stood before the tall, handsome Boston girl. Then, seeing that she was suffering, she lost all dread of her, and proceeded to administer consolation in a characteristic way that made Captain Fordyce swing himself off to his own concerns in deep inward satisfaction.

How dear she was to him! She would never know, never until she was older and had more sense. It was a misfortune that she was so young: and yet was it a misfortune? He did not regret it in some ways, and her girlish form danced before him over the deck, up the ladder, and across the bridge. Always there, never absent from him. Her name was written on the sky, the sea-birds shrieked “Nina!” He had scarcely a thought that was not in some way mixed up with her, his heart’s darling, the life of his life; his face shone with so telltale and radiant a light that the first officer turned on his heel and walked away lest he should be suspected of spying on his superior in command. However, as he walked he muttered with amused revenge, “There’s no fool like an old fool except a middle-aged fool.”

At noon the sea was still rough, the public rooms were deserted, and the staterooms full. But when the lunch bell rang, Nina demurely appeared, bringing with her a fresh, unruffled appearance, and, probably, her usual excellent appetite.

But there was something the matter with her, for when her husband rose from his seat with a relieved air and said, “I was afraid you were going to fail us,” she sat down without noticing him.

“May I give you some beef?” he went on, politely.

“No, thanks,” she said, briefly, “I wish some tongue,” and she glanced toward her right-hand neighbour, who immediately began to cut her thin slices.

Captain Fordyce frowned, and Nina, being quite well aware of it, wrinkled her own forehead in displeasure. He was the most jealous, tyrannical man ever created, and even the small matter of refusing to be served by him was sufficient to throw him in a temper. Yet there were sins worse than jealousy. Pray Heaven he was not guilty of them. Was he—could it be? What had Mr. Delessert meant by the few mysterious words he had spoken to her an hour previously? Her pretty face grew cold and hard as she calmly partook of a meal for which she had suddenly lost her appetite.

Captain Fordyce, reading her mind with his usual skill, though apparently he did not once look her way, was angry and uneasy. Some kind of an understanding existed between that tailor’s masterpiece and his shy New England wild flower. He saw it in the few words they addressed to each other, although the man was a model of reticent propriety, and the girl was cool and almost repellent in her remarks to him.

He listened to a question from the young man. “Are you going to venture on deck this afternoon?”

Nina politely but frigidly informed him that she did not know.

“The sea is not calm yet,” he observed, smoothly, “you had better have an escort.”

“Mrs. Fordyce is going up on the bridge with me,” observed the man at the head of the table, calmly surveying them both over his coffee-cup.

Nina remained severely non-committal until lunch was over, and her husband requested her to go and put on a warm jacket, and meet him by the large lamp outside the library.

Then she made a gesture of dissent. Her impulse was to do nothing of the kind. To be disposed of in this arbitrary fashion was irritating to the last degree, especially in view of the partial and exciting revelations made to her by the young man of fascinating manners. She had better shut herself up in her room for the rest of the day. But it was so small and so dreary, and these new thoughts would be so teasing. Perhaps she could force that delinquent ’Steban into some admissions if she were to skilfully question him. And the invariable presence of one of the officers on the bridge would keep him from annoying her with any lover-like nonsense; so with a sigh she relented, donned a heavy jacket, pulled a tight-fitting cap over her brown head, and obediently made her way in the direction of the big lamp.

CHAPTER VIII.
BEWARE THE FURY OF A PATIENT MAID.

The fresh air was delicious after the confined atmosphere below; and while Captain Fordyce was helping Nina up the bridge ladder, she saw with joy that her unconscious ally had not failed her,—the first officer was at his post.

She got up on a high seat where she could look far out over the great waves plunging and tossing about in their rough sport. For half an hour she was left to her own devices; and she almost forgot her tribulations in watching the fleet porpoises tearing through the water in their headlong career, and occasional shoals of whales blowing in the distance. There were sea-gulls, too. The murky background of the sky threw out in bold relief the dazzling whiteness of their wings as they gracefully circled about the ship, and while watching their frequent darting movements she repeated half-aloud a quotation from one of her well-thumbed school-books:

“‘The silver-winged sea-fowl on high

Like meteors bespangle the sky,

Or dive in the gulf, or triumphantly ride

Like foam on the surges, the swans of the tide.’”

“What are you saying?” asked Captain Fordyce, coming to her end of the bridge.

She shook her head obstinately.

“Ah! you will not repeat it, and that reminds me: I have forgotten to make an apology for bringing you up here against your will.”

She pressed her lips together, and from her high seat looked over his shoulder at the first officer, who was pacing up and down the bridge before them.

Captain Fordyce went on, in a lower voice: “I wanted to get you away from that man Delessert’s attentions. There is something about him that I do not like.”

“You are suspicious,” she retorted, coldly; “you have no right to assume so much authority over my movements.”

The first officer was at the other end of the bridge now, standing with his back to them, his attention fully concentrated on a distant ship. Nina wished earnestly that her last remark could be recalled, for it had transformed her husband into an ardent and determined lover.

“No right! I have the best right in the world. When I see you putting your fingers in the fire, you foolish girl, I shall be the first to pull them out.”

Nina was overawed, yet not totally subdued; and leaning forward, she saucily whispered a few words in the vicinity of his forehead: “My fingers are my own. If I choose to burn them it is none of your business.”

His black eyes met hers with a masterful light. “Try it, darling, and see; those fingers are mine;” and lightly touching them as he spoke, he went tramping away.

Nina shrugged her shoulders. It had come to the worst. He would not for an instant allow her to forget the hateful fetter that bound her to him. Their marriage, instead of being dropped, forgotten, no marriage at all, was to be made an excuse for the vilest tyranny. Oh, how angry she was! and she glared indignantly down at his collected face, for he had again approached and was saying something to her. She pulled herself together to hear it.

“I have ordered tea in the chart-room for you at eight bells. You will come, will you?”

“Not if it is to be a tea with you alone.”

He favoured her with a half-amused half-impatient shrug of his broad shoulders; then, after saying, “You flatter yourself, such a thought never came into my head,” he went away.

Not until the sweet-toned bell on the quarter-deck rang out eight strokes did he approach her again. “It is four o’clock now,” he said, lifting her down from her high seat.

They descended to the deck, and he told his servant, who was waiting for him, to go and ask Mrs. Grayley and Captain Eversleigh whether they would give him the pleasure of their company to tea in the chart-room. Then with a brief, “Are you satisfied?” he went up the steps and opened the door for her.

Nina followed him slowly and sat down on a stool in the corner.

“Will you have the kindness to take a seat farther away from me?” she said, when he turned his steps toward a stool next her own. But the request came too late; he had already seated himself.

“Nina,” he said, resting an arm on his knee, and deliberately stroking his heavy moustache while he bent forward to obtain a complete view of her, “to hear you talk at times, and to watch your actions, one would imagine that you hate me. I have been hoping that, since that ceremony two days ago, you would be different.”

“So I do hate you,” she cried, pushing his black coat sleeve aside. “I hate any man, who, forgetting that he is the natural protector of woman, becomes her persecutor.”

Then, with a passing thought that this was an uncommonly neat speech for a tyro, she launched herself fully on a tide of abuse.

She informed him that she was burdened by the grievances of a lifetime, that she was essentially practical and matter-of-fact, and that she hated a mystery as she hated sin. She had through long, long years chafed against the galling chain of circumstances that bound her to him. It was an insult to her, a creature with a will and judgment of her own, to have been born a slave, to have no means of freeing herself.

“By some means or other you got me into your power,” she uttered, in a voice of quiet, concentrated scorn; “you have tyrannised over me, married me, and in addition to this cowardly act, you have evaded your promises. You are a—”

She brought her goadings to an abrupt stop, for, with his dark face absolutely purple from some emotion, he had suddenly got up, turned his back on her, and was looking out the window.

She had made him angry. In a minute he would be demanding an apology for the plain language she had just uttered. Well, she was in for his displeasure now. She might as well free her mind of every bit of dissatisfaction, every demand for the future lurking in it.

“It is all true,” she said, sullenly; “and I won’t take it back, not a word of it. You would be a far better man to-day, if everybody had told you the truth about yourself as faithfully as I have done. I am not half as much afraid of you as—as those people you call my parents were. Heaven only knows,” desperately, “how you bewitched them, and made them take charge of me. And you have brought me on this voyage to make me fall in love with you, and strengthen your claim to me; but I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.”

She was not shrieking as she usually did in her childish fits of temper. She was progressing, yes, certainly progressing, and the man at the window wearily shrugged his shoulders. This was a more womanly rage. He preferred the childish one. It was more abusive, but not so taunting, so stinging.

Nina, exhausted and trembling as she never before had been after an explosion of wrath, had sunk back on her stool. She had won a victory. She had made him angry, and he would not trouble her again for some time. She wondered how angry he was. He could not go into a temper one minute and out of it the next as she could. Now if his resentment would only last until they got to England—

Just at that moment the not unusual sight of a pocket-handkerchief caused an entire revulsion of feeling in her quarrelsome breast. It was one with “Esteban Fordyce” stamped in one corner, and it lay on the table before her. It was beautifully white and clean, but so coarse, so very coarse. She drew hers from her pocket,—a tiny perfumed piece of muslin, with an edging of valuable lace. What a contrast! She spread it over as much of her face as it would cover, and began to cry stealthily. In a minute it was drenched. She threw it under the table, and took up the other more substantial one.

She was grieving very quietly; still the man at the window must hear her, yet he said never a word. Well, she had called him a coward, and a man does not like to hear that word even from the lips he loves best.

“’Steban,” she said, after a time, in a very low and miserable voice, “if I said anything to hurt your feelings, I am sorry for it.”

Still he did not turn his face to her, and she began to wonder whether she had been a righteously indignant victim or a base ingrate. Despite her slavery, she had certainly been well, nay, handsomely, treated. Her health, morals, and education had received enough attention to make them perfect. She had had articles of luxury that the mother of her adoption had frequently protested against as being better fitted for royalty than for a young person in her station of life; and—sharpest pang of all—to procure all this, the man before her had had to undergo not only the frightful loneliness of which he had spoken in the morning, but also toils, privations, risk of life. The thought was maddening, and she sprang from her seat and went boldly up to him.

“’Steban,” she said, with a plaintive sob, “I am ashamed of myself. Will you forgive me?”

He twisted his head away and tried to evade her, but she was resolute. She mounted a chair, leaned one hand on his shoulder, that was quivering with impatience, or restlessness, or wrath, or perhaps all three, and, bending forward, gazed curiously into his face.

One look was enough, for he was quietly and enjoyably laughing at her. She was about to get down, to beat an ignominious retreat to her own room, when he seized her with a murmured, “You small Amazon, I will talk to you by and by.” He carried her across the room. “There is some one coming—sit there,” he said, putting her in a chair. Then, with an impassive face, he held open the door.

Captain Eversleigh was just entering. He threw the flushed, panting girl a surprised glance, then picked up her cap that had fallen off during one of her bursts of eloquence. This did not add to her composure, and she intently studied the pattern of the carpet, until the entrance of Merdyce with a tray effected a diversion. Mrs. Grayley was too ill to appear, so it devolved upon her to pour out the tea.

The fear that the two men, though apparently quite taken up with each other,—Captain Eversleigh in uttering a flow of small talk, and Captain Fordyce in listening,—were in reality watching her, made her hand tremble as she put the sugar into the fragile cups with the butterfly handles. Suddenly and awkwardly she let the sugar-tongs fall into the cream-pitcher.

Captain Eversleigh was so near that the white fluid splashed over the front of his dark coat. She knew by the quick glance he cast her from under his light eyelashes that he thought she did it on purpose. This, together with her recent agitation, quite took away her remnant of fortitude, and she burst into a hysterical, Bacchante laugh. For politeness’ sake her companions tried to join her, but their share of the merriment was forced, and soon languished and died.

In her anxiety to get away, it appeared to her that they would never stop drinking tea. Captain Eversleigh’s potations seemed to her—a girl unaccustomed to the habitual drinking of tea between meals—to be positively alarming, and she ventured a faint glance of remonstrance as he passed his cup for the fourth time.

“You make tea marvellously well, Mrs. Fordyce,” he said, in a high-pitched, cheery voice; “but I shall not be inconsiderate enough to trouble you again. I see by the way you survey the teapot that we are boring you to death,” and, with deliberate haste, he finished at the same time his cup of tea and his discussion of English politics with Captain Fordyce. Then he took his leave, and Nina was about to glide after him, when her husband detained her.

CHAPTER IX.
SINCE YOU REFUSE, I THREATEN.

“Sit down, Nina,” he said, “I want to ask you something.”

“What is it?” she inquired. Her elevation of spirit was all gone, and with it her ecstasy of resentment and rebuke. All that she was conscious of now was the helpless feeling that he was immensely clever at ferreting out her inmost thoughts. Her fears were justified by his first question.

“Who has been talking to you about me?”

“Nobody,” she said, feebly.

“It was that fellow, Delessert. What did he say?”

Nina’s red lips immediately exhorted each other to wise silence by a strong and mutual pressure.

Captain Fordyce saw it, and although he had no conception of the innuendoes suggested to her, he immediately resolved to find some clue for his imagination to work upon.

“I know what it was,” he said, with determination; “any information from you will only second what I possess already.”

The lips flew open with an eager, “How do you know?”

“Don’t you suppose I see and hear a good deal in going about this steamer?”

“But you couldn’t have heard this morning,” she said, cunningly, “because he asked me to come away from the deck cabins, and there wasn’t a soul in the music-room. So how could you hear?”

“Does he not talk to other people?”

“No,” she said, promptly. “He said he wouldn’t for the world. You’re just pretending you’ve heard things.”

Captain Fordyce immediately abandoned this set of tactics for another. “I should think,” he said, gravely, “that a wife’s sense of honour would prevent her from listening to insinuations against her husband.”

A deeper cloud overshadowed her mobile face. “That’s just the trouble, ’Steban. He hinted and suggested. If he had said things right out, wouldn’t I have been mad with him!”

“What were the insinuations?”

“There—I’ve been telling you,” she said, penitently, “and I said I wouldn’t. I sha’n’t say another word.”

Her husband apparently made a like resolve, for he, too, sat speechless. How long was he going to keep her? and she restlessly drew out her watch, then made a motion as if to rise. A hand, however, was extended before her. She must sit there until she made further revelations. “I will not,” she determined, obstinately; but not a minute later a new thought entered her variable mind, and she made a slight movement indicative of curiosity.

She wisely waited, and after a time she said, hesitatingly, “’Steban—”

“Nina—”

She was nervously playing with his handkerchief, and, as if it supplied a suggestion, she raised her head. “Why do I have a fine handkerchief and you a coarse one?”

“There you are grappling with one of the heavy problems of life.”

“Have I any right to a fine one? Was I born to anything better than you?” she went on, in the same tentative manner.

A light broke over him, of which, however, no external flashes appeared. “That fool belongs to her father’s gang,” he scornfully reflected; “he has been asked to watch me, and suspects who she is. His game is to make her think she is being kept out of something, so she will join them. Well, my man, we shall see what we shall see.” Aloud he remarked, “Apparently, you may lay a just claim to more purple and fine linen than I possess.”

“Could you have it if you wished it? Would it be your right, or have I really more claim to things?” she urged. “Do not mind telling me, I would not care even—even if you had made some mistakes.”

“What kind of mistakes?”

“Well—I don’t know. Errors in judgment, we will say.”

“An error in judgment, like a poor man kidnapping a baby heiress, we will say.”

“You are making fun of me,” she said, faintly; but her face was crimson and he knew he was on the right track.

“And marrying her,” he continued, “and then the sharp young heiress found him out.”

“And forgave him,” she said, quickly. “Don’t forget that, ’Steban. She was cross at first, but she forgave him.”

“Why did she forgive him, Nina?” and he lowered his voice and his black head at the same time until he was within an inch of her face.

She drew back stiffly. “Because she had promised solemnly to stand by him.”

“When did she promise to stand by him?” he continued.

“When she married him; but he was hateful to her, and mysterious, and would not tell her things—’Steban, whose child am I?”

“It is almost dinner-time,” he observed, blandly. “You would do well to go and comb out that tousled, brown thicket.”

“I know that Mrs. Danvers is not my mother,” she said, intensely. “It is cruel to keep me in suspense. Is my mother living, ’Steban?”

“No,” he growled.

“Was she like Mrs. Danvers?”

“No,—she was an angel.”

“And my father, ’Steban?”

“What is the matter with Mr. Danvers?”

“He is not my father,—who is?”

“I don’t know anything about him,” and he resolutely turned his back on her.

She pursued him with questions, but he was deaf to them; at last, however, suddenly wheeling around with one himself, “How did you find out about Mrs. Danvers?”

“It was one day a month ago,” said the girl, in a low voice.

“But how?”

“It was on account of Mr. Danvers.”

“He was always doing some fool thing,—what was this one?”

“He gave me a present.”

“What was it?”

“A ring.”

“Didn’t he give his wife anything?”

“Oh, yes,—a book. He had been to Boston and he thought he would please us so much. It was pitiful. He saw she was annoyed, but he didn’t know what it was about, and went out of the room.”

“And she pitched into you.”

“Yes, she said you would be angry with him for giving me such handsome presents, and I thought what a strange thing for a mother to say; then it came over me like a flash,—‘This woman isn’t my mother.’”

“Did you tell her?”

“No, I ran up-stairs.”

“And cried.”

“And cried, ’Steban.”

“How did you feel?” he asked, curiously.

“How did I feel?” she repeated, musingly. “I felt, just for one dreadful minute, sick and faint and dizzy. It seemed as if the whole world were tumbling to pieces. Of course she had been jealous before, but in such little ways that I didn’t mind. This was such bad jealousy that it staggered me. I thought, ‘Is this my own mother?’ Then when it came over me that she wasn’t, I didn’t care so much. I suppose own mothers are never jealous?”

“Sometimes they are,” he muttered.

Nina drew a long breath. “Then a home like this must be a purgatory.”

“I could tell you stories,” he said, hurriedly, “but pshaw!—you haven’t the nerve. I will not hasten your knowledge of the ugly secrets of life. I suppose, child, you would have been glad to see me walking in just then?”

“I put your picture on the pillow,” she said, fervently; “I built a little fort of handkerchiefs around it, all but the eyes, to keep the tears off—”

She broke off, for his black, scintillating eyes were bent on her with the expression that she did not like. “I had only you to turn to,” she said, coldly. “Will you tell me some more about my real parents?”

“No, dear crybaby.”

“Then I shall apply to that young man.”

“Very well, apply to him—and regret it.”

“He is very handsome,” she said, aggravatingly.

“Very.”

“And young.”

“Quite a baby like yourself.”

“I like him,” she said, tauntingly.

“But you would not cry over his photograph.”

She sprang up, opened her mouth to make a response, thought better of it, and, with a threatening frown, ran down the steps to the deck.

CHAPTER X.
A GIRL’S WILL IS THE WIND’S WILL.

At dinner-time the man in command of the Merrimac was by no means jealous, although Nina had no words nor looks for him. For she was not happy in ignoring him. He knew it,—felt it in every fibre of his being.

What a little beauty she was, with her light head and her fascinating manner,—so lively with him, so quiet and guarded with strangers! He was madly in love with her now, just like a young fool of a fellow. Extravagant terms of adoration floated through his mind, and, with the ardency of twenty, he longed for the time to come when he would be permitted to utter them.

He had loved her for years, but not like this. He had kept her in a secret chamber of his heart, ready to be brought out for contemplation and admiration when he had a moment’s leisure; but now that she was with him in propria persona, lawfully and irrevocably united to him, he was never free from her bewildering presence,—never for one instant. Sleeping, waking, following the exacting demands of his duty, her teasing, roguish face was ever before him; her light eyes gazed steadily into his dark ones; he was haunted by the ringing words, “Mine, mine, yet not mine.”

It was balm to his soul that she did not like the exquisite Delessert. “Probably sees he hasn’t as much brains as I have,” he communed comfortably with himself, “and has taken a grudge against him on account of my warning, although she is too obstinate to acknowledge it. Her attention has left him now,—gone wandering off to the birds and flowers. What is she pondering, I wonder? Some of the deep, unutterable thoughts of girlhood, that she neither could nor would utter.

“The young coxcomb had better take care,” he went on to himself, “or he will get a setback. She has been strictly brought up, my young man, and will resent any familiarity even if the slightest;” and he dropped his exultant eyes to the table-cloth, as Nina quietly and decidedly rebuked her neighbour by a gesture when he offered her the polite and harmless civility of paring a refractory orange.

“You have done for yourself this time, my man,” pursued Captain Fordyce, with satisfaction, as Nina left her place, and, steadying herself by means of outstretched hands laid against the swaying walls and dodging chairs, skilfully piloted herself from the room. She said nothing to her husband as she passed him; but he looked over his shoulder and correctly guessed her destination to be Miss Marsden’s room.

Before knocking at the door she paused, and pressed her face against the cold glass of the port-hole beside it. A sweet and regretful wish for her home came over her. She would like to be with her parents,—no, not her parents,—the two people whom she considered to be her parents. They were very dear to her. She would never forget them, never. ’Steban must take her back to them very soon.

She started as she heard her name pronounced in a singularly pleasing voice, and, turning around, saw that Mr. Delessert was standing beside her.

“I fear I have offended you in some way,” he said, in a contrite tone.

“Oh, no, you did not offend me,” she said, shyly. “That is, not much.”

“I am glad you are not deeply incensed,” he went on, with a relieved air. “It emboldens me to ask a great favour of you.”

Although Nina gave him no encouragement beyond an attentive silence, he went on, “Is it your intention to spend the evening with Miss Marsden?”

Nina was surprised at his knowledge of the name and habitation of a person who had not yet made a public appearance; but she said, graciously, “Yes, if she wants me.”

“If she does not, will you come to the library and play whist? Mrs. Grayley is much better. She wished me to ask you.”

“I don’t know how to play.”

There were signs of a baffled purpose on his face rather than of disappointment. After some reflection, he said, “Perhaps you would like to go and walk on deck.”

“Captain Fordyce asked me not to go up again to-night. The decks are so shaky.”

He extended a shapely white hand. “Good night, then. I must not detain you. Perhaps to-morrow you will allow me the pleasure of teaching you how to play cards?”

“I don’t think I want to know,” she said, seriously; “they do lots of harm; but I’ll teach you a very funny thing if you can find some dominoes.”

He gravely assured her that he would be charmed, and was just about leaving her when he hesitated and turned back. “I beg your pardon, but I heard Captain Fordyce call you by a very odd and pretty name.”

“What was it?” she asked, wonderingly.

“Nina Stephana, or Stephanie, was it?”

“Oh! Nina Stephana,—he sometimes says it. Stephana is my middle name.”

“Indeed, it is a pleasing one. Strange that it should be the feminine of your husband’s name.”

“Yes,” said Nina, guardedly, “Esteban is certainly the Spanish for Stephen.”

“It seems as if your parents must have known of your approaching fate,” he remarked, mildly, and without emphasis.

“Yes, doesn’t it?” she replied, naïvely.

“I dare say he was attracted by the similarity of names.”

Nina was fidgeting with the ends of ribbon hanging from her belt. “See here,” she said, suddenly dropping them, and speaking with the utmost simplicity, “you remember what you were telling me this morning?”

“Our conversation lingers most pleasantly with me.”

“About my husband, and knowing a lady called Nina who has so much money, and who lost a little girl, and that my husband knew her, too.”

“Pardon me, I don’t think I was quite so exact. I said he might possibly know her.”

“Well, I must have got confused. I didn’t rightly understand what you said; but anyway it made me feel bad and suspicious of my husband, because—well, never mind why—and I promised you I wouldn’t say anything about it lest it might hurt his feelings. But he is so clever he just found out, and I think perhaps I had better not talk any more about him or about myself; for he will tell me everything all in good time; but I will talk of anything else. Is it a bargain?” and she held out a little frank hand.

Just for one instant he was touched,—he, the hunter in search of prey. There was a relaxation in the mask of habitual reserve that he wore, a softening of the faint but hard lines about the drooping moustache. “It is a bargain, certainly,” he said, quietly, and he pressed the fingers confidingly entrusted to him, and stood respectfully silent as she nodded a gay “Good-bye” and rapped on the door beside her.

Upon being bidden to enter, she went in and seated herself on the extreme edge of the couch opposite the berth where lay the tall young lady from Boston.

The girl was the personification of health and good-humour, as she sat with lips parted, white teeth gleaming in a merry, childish smile, and eyes fixed steadily on her languid but quietly observing companion. However, she would not talk. She was not accustomed to the presence of French maids, and her aversion was so plainly marked that Miss Marsden humoured her, by saying, “Marie, go for a walk.”

Miss Marsden was decidedly better. She had ceased wishing to be thrown to the fishes, and had even begun to take a feeble interest in the affairs of persons about her. This girl seemed particularly entertaining to her, and Marie had brought her a very spicy bit of gossip, from Lady Forrest’s maid, with regard to the black-looking captain who was so domineering and unkind to this “preetty, preetty leetle wife,” who, in her turn, did not care “at all, at all,” about him.

Miss Marsden made up her mind to set her talking; and, in a ladylike yet determined manner, she was soon dragging from the unsuspecting Nina various particulars with regard to her past life.

The country girl was no match for the city girl, and speedily fell into the trap, not of direct questions, but of responding to roundabout and apparently aimless remarks.

“I didn’t say Captain Fordyce was thirty-eight,” she observed, after a time, in surprised vexation.

Miss Marsden had found out all she wished to know, so she said, with a superior air, “No, child, but what was the use of the dates you mentioned if I did not put them together? I was always good at arithmetic at school.”

“So was I,” retorted Nina; “but I can’t make out how old you are.”

“You never will. If you notice, I carefully avoid figures in my conversation. It will be a good rule for you to follow ten years hence.”

“Then you are ten years older than I am,” said Nina, pouncing upon her recommendation.

“Not quite, pussy-cat,” said the young lady; “but I won’t tease you any more with questions, for now you have found me out, and will settle down into New England obstinacy. What kind of passengers have we? Who are the most interesting ones?”

Nina’s eyes sparkled. “A little wee mousie and a big British lion.”

“Sir Hervey and Lady Forrest,” said Miss Marsden, coupling this information with some obtained from Marie.

“Yes, and a big light-haired dog with an honest kind of a bark.”

“Who is that?”

“Captain Eversleigh, a land, not a sea captain.”

“Oh, that English officer. Marie told me about him. Who else is there?”

“A tall, thin giraffe of a boy called Maybury.”

“Dreadful! And the rest of the menagerie?”

“A very beautiful sleek creature with velvety eyes.”

“Man or woman?”

“Man. I think he’s like a panther.”

“Beware of his tricks, then.”

“He’s a nice panther,—a kind, polite one. Not growly and ugly like a bear.”

“Ah, there you have got in some one I know,” said Miss Marsden, teasingly.

“Bears have good qualities,” said Nina, composedly.

“You are not in love with your husband, my dear,” reflected Miss Marsden; “or, if you are, you are so artlessly artful about it that one can’t make you out.” Then she said aloud, “Will you hand me that bottle? I have a wretched headache.”

Nina at once dissolved in compassion. “Do let me smooth your head. Mamma says I can do it nicely.”

“Well, if you like, child. Why don’t you accent the last a in that word?”

“I am not English, I am American,” said the girl, warmly.

“You need not fear; no one will ever take you for an English girl,” replied her companion, as she brushed back the hair from her white forehead in order to allow Nina’s fingers to wander over it.

“You are a kind little thing,” she murmured, after a few minutes.

Nina, used to the constant companionship of members of her own sex, had missed them sorely during the last three days; and, touched by the gracefully uttered words, she bent down and kissed the forehead she was stroking.

A tear escaped from Miss Marsden’s eyelid. She put up her hand, wiped it away, and gave Nina an affectionate tap.

“Miss Marsden,” said the girl, hesitatingly, and after some minutes of silence, “I want to ask you something.”

“Well, child, what is it?” said her new friend, with patronising kindness.

“It’s about men. When they’re just married don’t you think they ought to tell their wives everything they know?”

“Of course,” said the young lady, ironically.

“But they don’t, do they?”

“No; they usually start out with a mouth full of lies.”

“About everything, do you mean?”

“Oh, no, only some things. They wouldn’t trouble to lie about everything.”

“Suppose you had a husband and he told you a story, what would you do?”

“I’d tell him another.”

Nina laughed. “But suppose you couldn’t think of one. Don’t you think you ought to make him confess and repent?”

“Yes, every time you found him out. But don’t try, my dear. They are too sharp for us. If you find them out in one thing they’ll try another.”

“Men are worse than women, aren’t they?”

“Incomparably worse,” said the young lady.

“‘Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever;

One foot in sea and one on shore,

To one thing constant never.’”

Nina was about to make a remark, but closed her mouth with a snap; for the French maid was just entering the room. She hurriedly surrendered her post to her, and, bidding Miss Marsden a regretful “Good night,” ran away to her room.

CHAPTER XI.
A REBUFF FOR ADONIS.

The next two days were stormy. It rained steadily; and, prevented by the extreme roughness of the sea from going on deck, the passengers lounged about in the close atmosphere below, till, growing weary of the sound of their own voices, they lapsed into a dismal, moping condition.

Even Nina succumbed to the general wretchedness. They were crossing the track of a gale that was cyclonic in its tendencies; and her husband either could not or would not come below, not even for his meals or to inquire after her.

Miss Marsden did not leave her room. Nina sat with her until she drove her away, when she usually fell into the hands of the ever-waiting Delessert. How strange that on the first day at sea she should have thought one could never get tired of staring at his handsome face! Alas! in his case, “beauty soon grows familiar, fades in the eye, and palls upon the sense.” For he had nothing to sustain it, no manliness, no energy. He often reminded the girl—horribly enough—of something without life, a waxen image, a marble statue, even a dead man; so perfectly emotionless, so soulless did he usually appear. What a contrast he was to the forceful, hard-working man above, who did not condescend to come to see her!

Nina’s conversations with the beauty tired her greatly: and yet she kept them up, for she had shrewdness enough to perceive that Adonis really admired her; that he made an effort to please her by keeping above flattering, semi-flirting commonplaces; and also, most potent of all, that he had some mysterious interest in her, connected with the subject of her parentage.

True to her resolve, she would not ask him questions with regard to this interest; and he did not volunteer information except occasionally, and in the most delicate and blameless way. If by chance she left the region of the ship and referred to some occurrence in her former life, there would be in his manner a slight infusion of animation, and he would drop some item of slight information. Then she would hastily leave the subject, until her next lapse into forgetfulness.

When Mrs. Grayley chose to leave the seclusion of her own room during the two days of imprisonment below, Nina was faintly amused, for the lady of middle age was consumed with admiration for Mr. Delessert. Upon her appearance he was obliged to put all his small graces and accomplishments on exhibition, and she fairly worried him to invent devices for whiling away the tedium of the long hours.

When the weather permitted, and often when it did not, the piano was resorted to; and Mr. Delessert was obliged to sing and play even at the risk of rolling off the stool several times during the performance of one piece. Upon these latter occasions, Mrs. Grayley always clapped her lily-like hands and gaily assured him that never before, off the stage, had she seen a man fall so gracefully.

He took her merriment not at all in good part, and usually wandered away. But always to come back; for the other people on board, the men especially, for some reason or other kept themselves severely away from him. Captain Eversleigh, who at first had shown a slight preference for his society, now, Nina noticed, never addressed him, but was constantly with the tall youth Maybury.

On the evening of the last day of bad weather Nina was in Miss Marsden’s room.

“It is eleven o’clock,” that young lady at last observed, “don’t you think you would better go to bed?”

“Don’t send me away yet,” pleaded Nina; “tell me some more things about yourself.”

The girl was kneeling by the lounge of her new-made friend; and, lovingly throwing an arm around her feet, she listened to stories of wanderings in Europe, until another half-hour had elapsed, when Miss Marsden insisted upon her saying good night.

“Shall I send Marie with you?” she inquired, when Nina reluctantly approached the door.

Nina darted a glance at the sleepy maid in the upper berth, shook her head and hurried from the room. With a light heart she trotted down the long passages. The Boston girl was a darling. She thoroughly approved of her. She was far more interesting to talk to than that faultfinding ’Steban. She did not miss him at all. She was glad that she had in some way offended him. She did not want to know what it was about. Very likely he was jealous of that wretched man, Delessert; and she scowled at his open cabin door that she was just passing.

A ray of light from it streamed out on the semi-dark passage; and as her pattering footsteps approached, he himself stepped out.

Nina threw him a hasty glance as he stood in the doorway. His face was deeply flushed and he was staring boldly at her. He had been drinking, the scamp, and she shrugged her shoulders in scorn. Once or twice before she had had her suspicions; now they were confirmed. And he had left the door-post and was blocking the passage.

She must control herself and not show wrath. That had been Mrs. Danvers’s instruction with regard to drunken tramps on the Rubicon Meadows roads. “Don’t cross them, but placate them and then run,” and Nina scanned the way behind him.

“What do you wish?” she asked, when he seemed to have some difficulty in articulating a sentence.

He was standing gracefully flourishing one hand and trying to manage his suddenly thickened tongue. “It is with regard to the name Nina Stephana,” he said, at last. “May I offer an explanation?”

His words were more courteous than his glances, and Nina, forgetting her caution, said, sharply, “No, I am in a hurry to go to my room. Please let me pass.”

“Nina Stephana,” he continued, in a dense voice; then he paused in order to adjust a trifling difficulty connected with balancing himself.

“Pretty name,” he went on, “brute of husband—stole child.”

Nina was not at all frightened. She became suddenly angry. He would slander that absent husband, would he?

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she snapped at him; “a young man like you to get drunk. What do you suppose will become of you when you are old? Will you let me go by? If you don’t—”

She was furious now, and although his brain was slightly clouded, he took in her meaning. She had said that he was drunk. “Isn’t enough on Merrimac to overcome me,” he muttered. “Pretty girl, but insulting. Must stand still, till apologise,” and one of his hands went weakly wandering in search of hers.

She was so intent upon watching his face that he did manage to seize one hand in his hot grasp, one of the hands that her ’Steban always held—even when he had them against her will—as gently and cautiously as if they were rose-leaves. The drunken scamp!

“Let that go at once,” she said, in a low, furious voice. “If you don’t, I will call my husband and he will knock you down.”

If she had been less absorbed in the present scene, and had given one glance behind her, she would have seen that husband coming down the passage with measured tread. But her attention was fully concentrated on her companion, and his on her; and the man behind stopped short as a pink palm suddenly flew into the air and then descended mercilessly.

She was only a little thing, but she had plenty of courage, and was by no means afraid of the tall young man bending over her; and there were no half-way measures with her. She had slapped the aggressor in the face, and had done it so successfully that he was glad to let her go.

With a curious dash of sympathy in the scorn with which he regarded the tottering figure, Captain Fordyce moved toward him and laid a hand on his shoulder: “Never mind her,—get into your room.”

Adonis was about to follow her, to endeavour to seize the wicked palm and press it in punishment to his lips; but now he speedily changed his mind, and in a shuffling manner proceeded to fall in with the advice given.

Captain Fordyce went after him, said a few words in his ear, then he stepped outside.

Nina had paused away down there in the half-darkness, and was looking back. If her enemy had fallen, it would have been like her to return and give him assistance. But now he had safely disappeared, and there was her husband.

She did not like the expression of his face. How unfortunate that he should have come on the scene just now! He would think that she had been flirting with that miserable young man. Should she go back and explain? No, she was afraid of that black Spanish temper. She would wait until morning; and, wisely wagging her head, she scampered the rest of the way to her room with the guilty air of a wanderer returning home.

However, she loitered by the doorway and listened with ears in the air. Her husband had followed her for some distance. Now he was going up a near stairway and giving vent to his displeasure by that most common and convenient of all methods,—violently banging a door. She shivered, and with a pagan wish that some dire calamity might befall the young man who had been the cause of her mortification, she went to bed.

For some reason or other she could not sleep. There was a thorn in her pillow; and although she shook it vigorously, it would not be driven out; therefore in impatient, healthy restlessness she lay awake, her brain a jumble of thought, pierced occasionally by the clear, weird sound of the boatswain’s whistle as it blew at intervals through the long, long night.

At seven o’clock she got up, and, with a face “tinged with wan from lack of sleep,” looked out the window. The storm was over. She had scarcely noticed its subsidence during the night, but now she saw that they had come to a glorious day. The air was keen and cool, the eastern sky was adorned with crimson and gold streaks, the morning sun was flashing on the deep green waves, and another quotation from her school-books leaped into her mind.

“‘The waters burn

With his enkindling rays,

No sooner touched than they return

A tributary blaze.’”

Dazzled by the glare, she turned away; she reflected that, as Miss Marsden had promised to take a walk with her before breakfast if the day were perfectly fine, she would have ample opportunity to admire the beauties of sea and sky from the vantage-ground of the deck. She would also prefer to have her first meeting with her husband, after the encounter of last night, away from the breakfast-table, and in the presence of a third person.

Therefore she scrambled through her dressing, and in a very few minutes closed her door behind her, and stepping outside, stumbled against the stewardess, who was passing by. She received good-naturedly Nina’s penitent apology, and asked her whether she was going on deck.

“You’d better have your rubbers, mem, and some one to hold on to. The decks are awful wet. Have you heard about the capting?”

“What about him?” asked Nina, catching her breath.

“He had a bad fall last night.”

“A fall,—is he hurt?”

“Pretty bad, mem. He’s got a long cut down his cheek.”

Nina laid a hand on her heart, and leaned up against the wall. “When did it happen?”

“Between eleven and twelve. You see he was walkin’ toward the bridge. He didn’t notice a heavy sea boardin’. It knocked him down; he struck an iron bar and lost some blood. But the doctor fixed him.”

“Is he—is he walking about?” asked Nina, with a white face, and stammering as she usually did when much moved.

“Yes, mem, but I guess he’ll go to bed now it’s turned fine. He don’t rest much in storms.”

Nina suddenly became absent-minded, and the woman took her departure. Left alone, she indulged in a guilty shudder and a confused soliloquy. Probably she had been the cause of this accident. ’Steban, horrified at last evening’s escapade in which she had been so blameless, had rushed on deck, and, blinded by rage, had forgotten to be watchful and had been struck down. He might have been killed; in which case she would have been the cause of his death.

In a transport of compassion and fear she drew her cloak about her and clambered on deck. She paused in the doorway and looked out. Storms leave their traces, and though the sky was so clear the sea had by no means calmed down; and the Merrimac rolled steadily from side to side, her decks for the greater part of the time covered with water. Nina could not get out. Planks about two feet high were placed on the thresholds of the doors to keep the water from coming in. If she ventured out it would be at the risk of being washed overboard. In deep discontent she stared about her. No one passed until some sailors came to heave the log. She watched the long line reeling out, then mechanically counted the knots as it was pulled in. The cheerful “heave ho” of the men’s voices prevented her from hearing some one splashing through the water. Not until a shadow darkened the doorway did she turn around. Captain Fordyce was just passing. His appearance was so unexpected and so singular that it drew from her a nervous, hysterical laugh.

The sickly hue of his face changed slightly, and he hastened his steps to get away from the sound of her voice.

“Oh, how bad I am!” she ejaculated. “He will think I am making fun of him, and I am so sorry. I must get out;” and, desperately climbing and scrambling over the planks, she fell into a wave that was running down the deck. The water surged coldly around her ankles; she felt herself slipping. The sailors had finished their work and were going away. The only person in sight was the rubber-clad form disappearing around a distant capstan.

“Captain Fordyce!” she called, despairingly.

He apparently did not hear her.

“Captain Fordyce,” she cried, indignantly, “will you come back?”

Her voice impressed him this time, and he turned around. His determined young wife had fallen on her knees in the water; with one hand she held back a tangle of curls that the wind had blown about her face; with the other she groped after a slipper sailing merrily toward the lee scuppers. With a few quick strides he was beside her, and, lifting her up, attempted to put her in the doorway. But she wriggled away from him, and took hold of the iron railing that ran around the deck cabins.

“You must not stand here,” he said, shortly.

She gazed earnestly at his averted face. Her eyes were full of tears, her voice seemed to have left her. “It must be his strange appearance,” she reflected, mournfully. “Those bandages are dreadfully disfiguring. One of his eyes is quite closed; his face is swollen, and the corner of his mouth is half-way up his cheek: and perhaps it is my fault. ’Steban,” she said, tentatively, “I heard about your fall a few minutes ago. I am so sorry—Good gracious! what an immense wave! Do you think it is coming over?”

“Yes.”

She threw a hurried glance about her. The Merrimac was lurching heavily. Along her sides the waves seemed hollowed out in a huge valley; other waves rose behind them like a range of hills. A dizzy feeling came over her, and she felt as if she were slipping for ever into the yawning gulf before her. “’Steban, ’Steban!” she shrieked, imploringly, as she clung to him, “don’t let me fall.”

His arms were strong. One of them was around her, the other grasped a stanchion. She felt perfectly safe now, and her heart beat a little quicker. His face was still averted. Jealousy, the rage of man, had probably entire possession of him; but just for an instant when they went down, down, till the rail that surrounded the deck dipped into the sea, the grasp of his arm tightened, the expression of his face changed. But when the ship righted herself he was again cold and forbidding, and all her courage died away. Dropping her eyes, she said, meekly, “I will go in now.”

“Wait an instant,” he said, quietly. “You must give up talking to that young man who has been amusing you during the past two days, and who was having so touching an interview with you last evening.”

“He is a very nice young man,” said Nina, feebly.

“He is a professional gambler.”

“A what?” she exclaimed, flinging up her head.

“A gambler,—a man whose business it is to fleece any person he meets who is silly enough to engage in games of chance with him, and”—meaningly—“he likes to play for high stakes.”

Nina restlessly moved one of her wet feet about the moist deck. And this was the sort of man she had allowed to talk to her,—to be friendly with her.

“A short time ago,” her husband went on, “he got into trouble on a French steamer because one of his victims shot himself.”

“Why did you not tell me this before?” murmured the girl, resentfully.

“Suppose I wanted you to learn a lesson.”

“You didn’t want me to learn a lesson,” she said, vehemently. “I don’t believe you knew, for sure, what he was like till just now: that sort of thing is not permitted. The captain of a ship—”

“Has no right whatever to control the amusements of his passengers unless they interfere with the exercise of his duties. I really wished to give you a lesson, though I did not know surely how bad he was till yesterday. The longer I live, the more I wonder over the guilelessness of women—good women—in making acquaintances.”

“I hate suspicious people,” retorted Nina.