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‘Asked him what?’

‘Why, if she asked him, you know.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You do perfectly. If that girl really asked him–on the balcony–to sail with us.’

‘My dear friend, do you suppose that if she did he would tell you?’

‘That’s just what he says. But he says she didn’t.’

‘And do you consider the statement valuable?’ I asked, laughing out. ‘You had better ask Miss Gracie herself.’

Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. ‘I couldn’t do that.’

‘Incomparable friend, I am only joking. What does it signify now?’

‘I thought you thought everything signified. You were so full of signification!’

‘Yes, but we are farther out now, and somehow in mid-ocean everything becomes absolute.’

‘What else can he do with decency?’ Mrs. Nettlepoint went on. ‘If, as my son, he were never to speak to her it would be very rude and you would think that stranger still. Then you would do what he does, and where would be the difference?’

‘How do you know what he does? I haven’t mentioned him for twenty-four hours.’

‘Why, 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 saloon the next day, after dinner, over the red cloth of the tables, beneath the swinging lamps and the racks of tumblers, decanters and wine-glasses, we sat down to whist, Mrs. Peck, among others, taking a hand in the game. She played very badly and talked too much, and when the rubber was over assuaged her discomfiture (though not mine–we had been partners) with a Welsh rabbit and a tumbler of something hot. We had done with the cards, but while she waited for this refreshment she sat with her elbows on the table shuffling a pack.