'It's very kind of her! She has been engaged for ages.' 'Yes, but that will soon be over.' 'So I suppose--as quick as we land. Every one knows it on Merrimac Avenue. Every one there takes a great interest in it.' 'Ah, of course, a girl like that: she has many friends.' 'I mean even people who don't know her.' 'I see,' I went on: 'she is so handsome that she attracts attention, people enter into her affairs.' 'She _used_ to be pretty, but I can't say I think she's anything remarkable to-day. Anyhow, if she attracts attention she ought to be all the more careful what she does. You had better tell her that.' 'Oh, it's none of my business!' I replied, leaving Mrs. Peck and going above. The exclamation, I confess, was not perfectly in accordance with my feeling, or rather my feeling was not perfectly in harmony with the exclamation. The very first thing I did on reaching the deck was to notice that Miss Mavis was pacing it on Jasper Nettlepoint's arm and that whatever beauty she might have lost, according to Mrs. Peck's insinuation, she still kept enough to make one's eyes follow her. She had put on a sort of crimson hood, which was very becoming to her and which she wore for the rest of the voyage. She walked very well, with long steps, and I remember that at this moment the ocean had a gentle evening swell which made the great ship dip slowly, rhythmically, giving a movement that was graceful to graceful pedestrians and a more awkward one to the awkward. It was the loveliest hour of a fine day, the clear early evening, with the glow of the sunset in the air and a purple colour in the sea. I always thought that the waters ploughed by the Homeric heroes must have looked like that. I perceived on that particular occasion moreover that Grace Mavis would for the rest of the voyage be the most visible thing on the ship; the figure that would count most in the composition of groups. She couldn't help it, poor girl; nature had made her conspicuous--important, as the painters say. She paid for it by the exposure it brought with it--the danger that people would, as I had said to Mrs. Peck, enter into her affairs. Jasper Nettlepoint went down at certain times to see his mother, and I watched for one of these occasions (on the third day out) and took advantage of it to go and sit by Miss Mavis. She wore a blue veil drawn tightly over her face, so that if the smile with which she greeted me was dim I could account for it partly by that. 'Well, we are getting on--we are getting on,' I said, cheerfully, looking at the friendly, twinkling sea. 'Are we going very fast?' 'Not fast, but steadily. _Ohne Hast, ohne Rast_--do you know German?' 'Well, I've studied it--some.' 'It will be useful to you over there when you travel.' 'Well yes, if we do. But I don't suppose we shall much. Mr. Nettlepoint says we ought,' my interlocutress added in a moment. 'Ah, of course _he_ thinks so. He has been all over the world.'