“Yes,” he said; “it struck me that it showed very questionable taste in the man to go about flaunting his money in the face of every one he met. As for his name--well, perhaps we had better not say anything about his name. You recollect what Tennyson makes Sir Tristram say to his Isolt--I don't mean you, Glaston, I know you only read the pre-Raphaelites-- “Let be thy Mark, seeing he is not thine.” But no one seemed to remember the quotation, or, at any rate, to see the happiness of its present application. CHAPTER XVI. It beckons you to go away with it, As if it some impartment did desire To you alone. ... Weigh what loss If with too credent ear you list his songs Or lose your heart... Fear it, Ophelia, fear it.--_Hamlet._ |IT could hardly be expected that there should be in the mind of Daireen Gerald a total absence of interest in the man who by her aid had been rescued from the deep. To be sure, her friend Mrs. Crawford had given her to understand that people of taste might pronounce the episode melodramatic, and as this word sounded very terrible to Daireen, as, indeed, it did to Mrs. Crawford herself, whose apprehension of its meaning was about as vague as the girl's, she never betrayed the anxiety she felt for the recovery of this man, who was, she thought, equally accountable for the dubious taste displayed in the circumstances of his rescue. She began to feel, as Mr. Glaston in his delicacy carefully refrained from alluding to this night of terror, and as Mrs. Crawford assumed a solemn expression of countenance upon the least reference to the girl's participation in the recovery of the man with the melodramatic name, that there was a certain bond of sympathy between herself and this Oswin Markham; and now and again when she found the doctor alone, she ventured to make some inquiries regarding him. In the course of a few days she learned a good deal. “He is behaving handsomely--most handsomely, my dear,” said the doctor, one afternoon about a week after the occurrence. “He eats everything that is given to him and drinks in a like proportion.” The girl felt that this was truly noble on the part of the man, but it was scarcely the exact type of information she would have liked. “And he--is he able to speak yet?” she asked. “Speak? yes, to be sure. He asked me how he came to be picked up, and I told him,” continued the doctor, with a smile of gallantry of which Daireen did not believe him capable, “that he was seen by the most charming young lady in the world,--yes, yes, I told him that, though I ran a chance of retarding his recovery by doing so.” This was, of course, quite delightful to hear, but Daireen wanted to know even more about the stranger than the doctor's speech had conveyed to her.