ne of the other ships?"

"We should be there now, or at any rate tomorrow."

"Well then I'm glad it isn't one of the others"--and I smiled at the
young lady on my arm. My words offered her a chance to say something
appreciative, and gave him one even more; but neither Jasper nor Grace
Mavis took advantage of the occasion. What they did do, I noticed, was
to look at each other rather fixedly an instant; after which she turned
her eyes silently to the sea. She made no movement and uttered no sound,
contriving to give me the sense that she had all at once become perfectly
passive, that she somehow declined responsibility. We remained standing
there with Jasper in front of us, and if the contact of her arm didn't
suggest I should give her up, neither did it intimate that we had better
pass on. I had no idea of giving her up, albeit one of the things I
seemed to read just then into Jasper's countenance was a fine implication
that she was his property. His eyes met mine for a moment, and it was
exactly as if he had said to me "I know what you think, but I don't care
a rap." What I really thought was that he was selfish beyond the limits:
that was the substance of my little revelation. Youth is almost always
selfish, just as it is almost always conceited, and, after all, when it's
combined with health and good parts, good looks and good spirits, it has
a right to be, and I easily forgive it if it be really youth. Still it's
a question of degree, and what stuck out of Jasper Nettlepoint--if, of
course, one had the intelligence for it--was that his egotism had a
hardness, his love of his own way an avidity. These elements were jaunty
and prosperous, they were accustomed to prevail. He was fond, very fond,
of women; they were necessary to him--that was in his type; but he wasn't
in the least in love with Grace Mavis. Among the reflexions I quickly
made this was the one that was most to the point. There was a degree of
awkwardness, after a minute, in the way we were planted there, though the
apprehension of it was doubtless not in the least with himself. To
dissimulate my own share in it, at any rate, I asked him how his mother
might be.

His answer was unexpected. "You had better go down and see."

"Not till Miss Mavis is tired of me."

She said nothing to this and I made her walk again. For some minutes she
failed to speak; then, rather abruptly, she began: "I've seen you talking
to that lady who sits at our t