‘Miss Hetherley!’ he exclaimed, in a voice that trembled with nervousness and excitement. ‘Miss Hetherley, will you not speak to me?’ Iris was not unprepared for the meeting, although a moment before she had believed herself to be alone. She had talked the matter over with Maggie, and they had agreed that it was impossible she could avoid him for the whole course of the voyage, and that, sooner or later, Vernon Blythe and she must speak to one another again. Yet what to say to him, or how to explain her presence on board the _Pandora_, she knew not, and her first refuge was in an attempt at denial. ‘I am not Miss Hetherley,’ she answered, in a low voice, and with her face turned from him. ‘Forgive me. I know you are married, but I never heard the name of your husband. How am I to address you?’ ‘You--you--are mistaken,’ repeated Iris. ‘I am _Miss Douglas_.’ Vernon looked down at her for a few moments in silence, his young, lithe figure drawn up to its full height, as he stood beside her. She--still drooping over the table, hid her burning face as best she could from him. ‘Iris,’ he said presently, ‘why do you want to deceive me?’ At that appeal--so tenderly spoken--she broke down, and began to cry. ‘Oh, don’t do _that_, for Heaven’s sake!’ exclaimed Vernon. ‘If you wish to avoid me--if my presence is obnoxious to you--say so, and I will go away, and never come near you again. But don’t cry. It is more than I can stand. If you are in trouble, let me help you. Am I not your friend?’ ‘I have no friends,’ sobbed Iris. ‘_No friends!_’ he echoed reproachfully. ‘Have you then quite forgotten Dunmow, and the Bridge of Allan?’ Forgotten them. How she wished that she could forget them. As Vernon spoke, a vision rose before her of the heather-covered hills, the rippling burns, the blue, misty sky of far-off Scotland, where she had first met him, and, above them all, the earnest, pleading, passionate young face that had implored her to exchange her heart for his. How often she had thought of it since. How often had the memory of his eyes, swimming in a mist of unshed tears, come between her and the disappointment of her married life. How often, when the scales had fallen from her own vision, and the man she had believed to be a god had proved to be the commonest of clay, had Iris Harland not wished she had been a little less hasty, and taken time to weigh the several merits of the men who had asked to link their lot with hers. And as Vernon’s soft voice, sounding so different when he spoke to her from what it did when he spoke to others, fell on her ear, it brought the past so vividly before her, she could not stay her tears.