--the experiment of your father's fabric. I make
myself--ha! ha!--like a workman. Ah, bah! the heat, the darkness, the
plebeian motion make my head to go round. I stagger, I faint, I cry
out, I fall. But what of that? The great God hears my cry and sends
me an angel. Voila!"

He attempted an easy gesture of gallantry, but overbalanced himself and
fell sideways on the pallet with a gasp. Yet there was so much genuine
feeling mixed with his grotesque affectation, so much piteous
consciousness of the ineffectiveness of his falsehood, that the young
girl, who had turned away, came back and laid her hand upon his arm.

"You must lie still and try to sleep," she said gently. "I will return
again. Perhaps," she added, "there is some one I can send for?"

He shook his head violently. Then in his old manner added, "After
Mademoiselle--no one."

"I mean--" she hesitated--"have you no friends?"

"Friends,--ah! without doubt." He shrugged his shoulders. "But
Mademoiselle will comprehend--"

"You are better now," said Rosey quickly, "and no one need know
anything if you don't wish it. Try to sleep. You need not lock the
door when I go; I will see that no one comes in."

He flushed faintly and averted his eyes. "It is too droll,
Mademoiselle, is it not?"

"Of course it is," said Rosey, glancing round the miserable room.

"And Mademoiselle is an angel."

He carried her hand to his lips humbly--his first purely unaffected
action. She slipped through the door, and softly closed it behind her.

Reaching the upper deck she was relieved to find her father had not
returned, and her absence had been unnoticed. For she had resolved to
keep de Ferrieres's secret to herself from the moment that she had
unwittingly discovered it, and to do this and still be able to watch
over him without her father's knowledge required some caution. She was
conscious of his strange aversion to the unfortunate man without
understanding the reason, but as she was in the habit of entertaining
his caprices more from affectionate tolerance of his weakness than
reverence of his judgment, she saw no disloyalty to him in withholding
a confidence that might be disloyal to another. "It won't do father
any good to know it," she said to herself, "and if it DID it oughtn't
to," she added with triumphant feminine logic. But the impression made
upon her by the spectacle she had just witnessed was stronger than any
other consideration. The revel