not a mark for general observation, you shall hear
it."

"I would rather hear it standing."

"I told you the condition."

"Then I shall go and ask Captain Tarbell."

"And come sobbing back to me for 'reassurance.'"

"No," she said, quickly, "I should go down to Ursule."

"Ursule has a mattress on deck; I assisted her up."

"There is the captain! Now"----

He seized her hand and drew her down beside him. For an instant she
would have resisted, as the sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks
attested,--and then, with the instinctive feminine baseness that compels
every woman, when once she has met her master, she submitted.

"I am sorry, if you are offended," said he. "But the captain cannot
attend to you now, and it is necessary to be guarded in movement; for a
slight thing on such occasions may produce a panic."

"You should not have forced me to sit," said she, in a smothered voice,
without heeding him; "you had no right."

"This right, that I assume the care of you."

"Monsieur, you see that I am quite competent to the care of myself."

"Marguerite, I see that you are determined to quarrel."

She paused a moment, ere replying; then drew a little nearer and turned
her face toward him, though without looking up.

"Forgive me, then!" said she. "But I would rather be naughty and
froward, it lets me stay a child, and so you can take me in keeping, and
I need not think for myself at all. But if I act like a woman grown,
then comes all the responsibility, and I must rely on myself, which is
such trouble now, though I never felt it so before,--I don't know why.
Don't you see?" And she glanced at him with her head on one side, and
laughing archly.

"You were right," he replied, after surveying her a moment; "my
proffered protection is entirely superfluous."

She thought he was about to go, and placed her hand on his, as it lay
along the side. "Don't leave me," she murmured.

"I have no intention of leaving you," he said.

"You are very good. I have never seen one like you. I love you well."
And, bathed in moonlight, she raised her face and her glowing lips
toward him.

Mr. Raleigh gazed in the innocent eyes a moment, to seek the extent of
her meaning, and felt, that, should he take advantage of her childlike
forgetfulness, he would be only reenacting the part he had so much
condemned in one man years before. So he merely bent low over the hand
that lay in his, raised it, and touched his lips to that. In an i