Otherwise ... and so on. He would not do more than allude to the question of recompense, which would be on a scale commensurate with the magnitude of the obligation. The Captain, no doubt, would consent to keep the package in his safe during the voyage.... "Well, the _Manola_ had no safe, but Jack had a formidable old cash-box in his room, and it was with the idea of carrying out the behests of one who could no longer enforce them that I carried the big yellow envelope to Jack and told him how I came by it. Even when it was condensed to suit his bluff mentality, it was a long story. I was astonished at the abstraction into which it threw him. On the road he returned to it again and again. His imagination continually played round the history of 'that gel' as he called her. He could not get used to the startling fact that all this had been going on 'under his very nose, by Jingo!' and he hadn't had the slightest suspicion. 'Forgotten all about her, very nearly. And by the Lord, I thought you had, too, Fred.' "And I should like," said Mr. Spenlove, "to have heard him tell Mrs. Evans. Perhaps, though, it would not have proved so very sensational after all. It is exceedingly difficult to shock a woman who has been married for a number of years. They seem to undergo a process which, without affording them any direct glimpse into the bottomless pit, renders them cognizant of the dark ways of the human soul. Perhaps you don't believe this. Perhaps you think I am only trying to joke at the expense of a married woman I never liked. Well, try it. Take a benign matron of your own family, who has endured the racking strain of years of family life and tell her your own scandalous history, and she will amaze you by her serene acceptance of your infamous proceedings. So perhaps, as I say, I missed nothing very piquant after all. I had to content myself with the eloquent silence of the respectable but single Tonderbeg, moving about in the cabin, his blond head bent in gentle melancholy, his features composed into an expression of respectful forgiveness.