on't know what she tries to be, but she succeeds in being very
handsome.'

'So much the better for you. I'll leave her to you, for I shall be shut
up. I like her being placed under my "care."'

'She will be under Jasper's,' I remarked.

'Ah, he won't go--I want it too much.'

'I have an idea he will go.'

'Why didn't he tell me so then--when he came in?'

'He was diverted by Miss Mavis--a beautiful unexpected girl sitting
there.'

'Diverted from his mother--trembling for his decision?'

'She's an old friend; it was a meeting after a long separation.'

'Yes, such a lot of them as he knows!' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.

'Such a lot of them?'

'He has so many female friends--in the most varied circles.'

'Well, we can close round her then--for I on my side knew, or used to
know, her young man.'

'Her young man?'

'The _fiance_, the intended, the one she is going out to. He can't by
the way be very young now.'

'How odd it sounds!' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.

I was going to reply that it was not odd if you knew Mr. Porterfield,
but I reflected that that perhaps only made it odder. I told my
companion briefly who he was--that I had met him in the old days in
Paris, when I believed for a fleeting hour that I could learn to paint,
when I lived with the _jeunesse des ecoles_, and her comment on this was
simply--'Well, he had better have come out for her!'

'Perhaps so. She looked to me as she sat there as if she might change
her mind at the last moment.'

'About her marriage?'

'About sailing. But she won't change now.'

Jasper came back, and his mother instantly challenged him. 'Well, _are_
you going?'

'Yes, I shall go,' he said, smiling. 'I have got my telegram.'

'Oh, your telegram!' I ventured to exclaim. 'That charming girl is your
telegram.'

He gave me a look, but in the dusk I could not make out very well what
it conveyed. Then he bent over his mother, kissing her. 'My news isn't
particularly satisfactory. I am going for _you_.'

'Oh, you humbug!' she rejoined. But of course she was delighted.

II

People usually spend the first hours of a voyage in squeezing themselves
into their cabins, taking their little precautions, either so excessive
or so inadequate, wondering how they can pass so many days in such a
hole and asking idiotic questions of the stewards, who appear in
comparison such men of the world. My own initiations were rapid, as
became an old sailor, and so it seemed were Mis