she told me herself: she came in this afternoon.'

'What an odd thing to tell you!' I exclaimed.

'Not as she says it. She says he's full of attention, perfectly
devoted--looks after her all the while. She seems to want me to know it,
so that I may commend him for it.'

'That's charming; it shows her good conscience.'

'Yes, or her great cleverness.'

Something in the tone in which Mrs. Nettlepoint said this caused me to
exclaim in real surprise, 'Why, what do you suppose she has in her
mind?'

'To get hold of him, to make him go so far that he can't retreat, to
marry him, perhaps.'

'To marry him? And what will she do with Mr. Porterfield?'

'She'll ask me just to explain to him--or perhaps you.'

'Yes, as an old friend!' I replied, laughing. But I asked more
seriously, 'Do you see Jasper caught like that?'

'Well, he's only a boy--he's younger at least than she.'

'Precisely; she regards him as a child.'

'As a child?'

'She remarked to me herself to-day that he is so much younger.'

Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. 'Does she talk of it with you? That shows she
has a plan, that she has thought it over!'

I have sufficiently betrayed that I deemed Grace Mavis a singular girl,
but I was far from judging her capable of laying a trap for our young
companion. Moreover my reading of Jasper was not in the least that he
was catchable--could be made to do a thing if he didn't want to do it.
Of course it was not impossible that he might be inclined, that he might
take it (or already have taken it) into his head to marry Miss Mavis;
but to believe this I should require still more proof than his always
being with her. He wanted at most to marry her for the voyage. 'If you
have questioned him perhaps you have tried to make him feel
responsible,' I said to his mother.

'A little, but it's very difficult. Interference makes him perverse. One
has to go gently. Besides, it's too absurd--think of her age. If she
can't take care of herself!' cried Mrs. Nettlepoint.

'Yes, let us keep thinking of her age, though it's not so prodigious.
And if things get very bad you have one resource left,' I added.

'What is that?'

'You can go upstairs.'

'Ah, never, never! If it takes that to save her she must be lost.
Besides, what good would it do? If I were to go up she could come down
here.'

'Yes, but you could keep Jasper with you.'

'Could I?' Mrs. Nettlepoint demanded, in the manner of a woman who knew
her son.

In the