'I don't care what she knows,' said my young lady. After a moment she went on--'She must have seen that I'm not very sociable.' And then--'What are you laughing at?' My laughter was for an instant irrepressible--there was something so droll in the way she had said that. 'Well, you are not sociable and yet you are. Mrs. Peck is, at any rate, and thought that ought to make it easy for you to enter into conversation with her.' 'Oh, I don't care for her conversation--I know what it amounts to.' I made no rejoinder--I scarcely knew what rejoinder to make--and the girl went on, 'I know what she thinks and I know what she says.' Still I was silent, but the next moment I saw that my delicacy had been wasted, for Miss Mavis asked, 'Does she make out that she knows Mr. Porterfield?' 'No, she only says that she knows a lady who knows him.' 'Yes, I know--Mrs. Jeremie. Mrs. Jeremie's an idiot!' I was not in a position to controvert this, and presently my young lady said she would sit down. I left her in her chair--I saw that she preferred it--and wandered to a distance. A few minutes later I met Jasper again, and he stopped of his own accord and said to me-- 'We shall be in about six in the evening, on the eleventh day--they promise it.' 'If nothing happens, of course.' 'Well, what's going to happen?' 'That's just what I'm wondering!' And I turned away and went below with the foolish but innocent satisfaction of thinking that I had mystified him. IV 'I don't know what to do, and you must help me,' Mrs. Nettlepoint said to me that evening, as soon as I went in to see her. 'I'll do what I can--but what's the matter?' 'She has been crying here and going on--she has quite upset me.' 'Crying? She doesn't look like that.' 'Exactly, and that's what startled me. She came in to see me this afternoon, as she has done before, and we talked about the weather and the run of the ship and the manners of the stewardess and little commonplaces like that, and then suddenly, in the midst of it, as she sat there, _a propos_ of nothing, she burst into tears. I asked her what ailed her and tried to comfort her, but she didn't explain; she only said it was nothing, the effect of the sea, of leaving home. I asked her if it had anything to do with her prospects, with her marriage; whether she found as that drew near that her heart was not in it; I told her that she mustn't be nervous, that I could enter into that--in short I said what I could. All that she replied was that she _was_ nervous, very nervous, but that it was already over; and then she jumped up and kissed me and went away. Does she look as if she had been crying?' Mrs. Nettlepoint asked. 'How can I tell, when she never quits that horrid veil? It's as if she were ashamed to show her face.' 'She's keeping it for Liverpool. But I don't like such incidents,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint. 'I shall go upstairs.' 'And is that where you want me to help you?'