‘Ay, to look at, your honour. Up to the hammer. A little too much of her, some folks might think, but such eyes, sir! such teeth! and talk of _figures_!’ and here he delivered a low prolonged whistle of admiration. ‘She was a tolerably amiable lady, I suppose?’ said I carelessly. ‘Well, sir, if you’ll forgive me for saying of it, that’s just what she _wasn’t_,’ he replied. ‘She was one of them parties as can be very glad and very sorry for themselves and for nobody else. She steered Sir Wilfrid as I might this here “Bride.” She needed but to set her course, and the craft answered the shift of helm right away off. Ye never saw her, sir?’ ‘Never.’ ‘Well, she hadn’t somehow the appearance of what I tarm a marrying woman. She looked to be one of them splendid females as can’t abide husbands for the reason that, being made up of wanity, nothing satisfies ’em but the sort of admiration that sweethearts feels. I took notice once that, she being seated in a cheer, as it might be there,’ said he, indicating a part of the deck with a nod of his long head, ‘Sir Wilfrid draws up alongside of her to see if she were comfortable and if he could run on any errand for her; she scarcely gave him a look as she answered short as though his merely being near fretted her. But a minute arter up steps a gent from the cabin, the Honourable Mr. Lacy, and dawdles up to her, pulling at his bit of a whisker and showing of his teeth over a long puking of “Haw! haws!” and “Yaases:” and then see the change in her ladyship! Gor bless my heart and soul, your honour, ’twarn’t the same woman. She hadn’t smiles enough for this here honourable. Her voice was like curds and whey. She managed the colour in her cheeks, too, somehow, and bloomed out upon the poor little dandy when a minute afore her face to her husband was as blank as a custard. No, Mr. Monson, sir, her ladyship wasn’t a marrying woman. She was one of them ladies meant by natur to sit in a gilt cheer in the heart of a crowd of young men all a-bowing to and a-worshipping of her; very different from her sister, sir. That little lady down below there I allow’ll have the true makings of an English wife and an English mother in her, for all she’s an Australian.’ ‘I suppose, then, you were not very much surprised when you heard of Lady Monson’s elopement?’ ‘No more surprised, your honour, than a man can be when a thing that he’s been expecting has happened. But she’s not going to stick to the colonel. If his honour don’t overhaul the “Shark” and separate ’em, she’ll be separating herself long afore the time it ’ud occupy the schooner to sail round the world. Lord love ’ee, sir; if I were to hear of her heeloping with some African king, atop of an elephant, it wouldn’t surprise me. When a woman like her allows a chap to cut her cable he must be a wiser man than e’er a prophet of them all that’s writ about who’s going to tell you where the hull’ll strand or bring up.’