herself to treat him as a human being. Yet he interested her; he had the fascination of all mysterious persons; she could never accept her husband’s contemptuous estimate. Possibly she felt the need for the society of another lady, and hesitated to condemn Perrin, as being the nearest thing to a lady in the ship. Thus Robinson Crusoe on his island unduly valued a parrot. About half an hour before her husband came on deck, Olivia had seen Perrin coming down from aloft, where he had been engaged with a seaman in fitting new spunyarn gaskets to all the yards on the mainmast, so that the furls might look neat when they made Virginia. He enjoyed his work aloft until he grew hot, when he soon found a pretext for leaving it. On reaching the deck, he went aft to Olivia (who smiled her recognition), and sat down at her side, content to stay still, to cool. The sight of Olivia’s beauty so near to him filled him with a kind of awe. Like a schoolboy impressed by some beautiful woman who is gracious to him, perhaps merely from that love of youth which all women have, so did Perrin imagine heroisms, rescuing that dear head, now bent with a shy sweetness over her mat. “Olivia,” he said at length, about a minute after the proper time for the request, “will you show me what you have done?” She looked up from her work with a smile that was half amusement at his serious tone. “I’ve not done very much,” she said, showing her canvas, with its roses, surrounded by a garland of verbena leaves, still little more than outlined. “Did you ever try to make mats?” she added. “I can make daisy-mats with wool, on a frame with pins,” he answered. “Can you make those? You cut them, and they show like a lot of daisies.” “I used to make them,” she said, “when I went to stay with my aunt Pile, at Eltons. You were at Eltons, too, were you not? I think you stayed there?” “Yes. I stayed there. What a beautiful old place it is. Have you been there lately?” “No. Not for two or three years now. I was very gay the last time I was there. I think I went to a dance every night. My poor brothers were alive then. We used to drive off together. I’ve never been there since.” “Ah,” said Perrin. He paused for a moment, so that his brain might make the picture of the woman before him sitting in the gloom of the carriage, with all her delicate beauty warmly wrapped by the two young men now dead. “Furs,” he muttered to himself. “Furs, and the lamps shining on the snow.” Then he looked at Olivia, noting the grey and black dress, the one gold bracelet round her wrist, and the old pearl ear-rings against the mass of hair. “What jolly clothes women wear,” he said, meaning (like most men who use such phrases) “How beautiful you look there.” “This?” she asked. “This is my oldest frock.” “Is it? I didn’t remember it. How do you get your clothes?” “I tell my dressmaker.” “I wish you’d let me design you a dress.” “I should be very pleased. What sort of dress would you design for me?”