Lord Stuart could hardly understand the strange interest he took in Norman de Vere’s lovely young wife. She was beautiful, but he had seen many beautiful women without feeling much interest in them. He was past sixty now, and the interest he took in women was cynical rather than romantic. Since the time when Camille de Vere’s charms had made him a captive for a brief space of time, he had felt no touch of the tender passion. But the lovely face and dark-blue eyes of Norman de Vere’s girl-bride haunted him with strange persistency, and he caught himself longing to know her, wondering if Norman would present him when Thea came on deck again. He did not dare to ask the favor, remembering that he had not been quite guiltless in the affair with Camille, but had actually wished to part her from her boy-husband, and marry her himself. It was no such impulse that stirred him now in thinking of the fair young girl who had taken the place of fair but faulty Camille in Norman’s heart. If he had had a daughter, Lord Stuart would have felt much the same toward her as he did toward Thea. When she came on deck again, her beautiful face a little pale from her experience of seasickness, he was standing near her steamer-chair, and Norman, after a moment’s hesitation, presented him to his wife. Lord Stuart felt an odd thrill of pleasure when Thea allowed him to touch her dimpled white hand. He pressed it gently, and murmured his pride and pleasure at knowing her, while she responded in shy yet gracious terms. In truth, the young girl was somehow as much attracted by the old nobleman as he had been by her. There was something so kind and friendly in his glance and smile, and his manners were so genial, that she liked him at once. The two immediately became friends, and whether Norman liked it or not, he gave no sign of displeasure, and resolved not to dampen his darling’s pleasure by telling her of that long-past time when he and Lord Stuart had been the most bitter foes. He murmured to himself: “The past is in the eternal past, Our heads will soon lie low, Lorena, Life’s tide is ebbing out so fast.” Lord Stuart had been too wise to confess all his folly. Not even Norman would ever know that for a brief while he had adored Camille and hated her boy-husband. Enough to own that they had amused themselves by a flirtation that, while harmless in the eyes of the _blasé_ world, had seemed culpable in the eyes of the hot-headed boy. It was all so long ago that Norman could not refuse to look at it more leniently now--could not throw the shadow of that past across the sunshine of Thea’s present.