‘Ah! I can guess now what has brought this serious fit upon you, Alice. Your mother has been frightening you with regard to what Mr Leyton may say to our engagement. But don’t you be afraid, dear. If he should make my position an objection to our immediate marriage, I’ll leave you in his care till I shall have attained higher rank and better pay. And, meanwhile, you can be learning your duties as a wife,’ said Jack slyly. ‘How can I learn with no one to teach me?’ replied Alice sharply. ‘Besides, Jack, it may be years and years before you get promotion! Am I to be an old maid all that time?’ ‘Why, I thought you were never going to marry at all just now,’ said her lover. ‘You are only just eighteen, Alice. Surely a few years--say till you’re five-and-twenty--would not be too long to wait for such happiness as ours will be? It isn’t as if you were going to marry Captain Lovell, you know, or some common-place fellow of that sort. I will serve for you as Jacob did for Rachel, and if I can wait seven years for you, surely you will do no less for me, eh?’ ‘Oh, no! of course not,’ replied the girl, who had the greatest difficulty to keep the tears back from her eyes. ‘But--but I think I’d rather go down to the saloon, Jack, this wind is so horribly strong it makes my eyes water.’ ‘All right, if you wish it, but I must tow you safely to the door,’ replied Jack, as he took her across the deck and saw her disappear in the depths of the saloon cabin, without speaking another word to him. ‘Poor little girl,’ he thought, as he turned laughing away, ‘she’s terribly puzzled to know what to say to me. She would have liked to scratch out my eyes for that remark about Lovell, only she didn’t dare. Well, it’ll come out sooner or later, but it’s not my business to help her make the confession. If she gives me up of her own free will, I shall thank God. But if this is only a passing fancy on her part or _his_, I must go through with it.’ And Vernon Blythe sighed as heavily at the prospect as Alice Leyton had done, as he went to his work. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. TO THE RESCUE.