Heriot recalled the criticism during his first day on board. Neither of the ladies was visible until Queenstown was reached, and he paced the deck, pursuing his reflections by the aid of tobacco. She would "make an admirable mother, and that was the main thing"! Of the second half of the opinion he was not so sure. To marry a woman simply because one believed she would shine in a maternal capacity was somewhat too altruistic, he thought. However, he was fully aware that Miss Pierways had other recommendations. She appeared with her mother at the head of the companion-way while he was wishing that he hadn't come, and he found their chairs for them, and arranged their rugs, and subsequently gave their letters to the steward to be posted. After leaving Queenstown, Mrs. Van Buren's sufferings increased, and the girl, who, saving for a brief interval, was well and cheerful, was practically in his charge. It was Heriot who accompanied her from the saloon after breakfast, and strolled up and down with her till she was tired. When the chair and the rug--the salient features of a voyage are the woman, the chair, and the rug--were satisfactorily arranged, it was he who sat beside her, talking. Flying visits she made below, while her mother kept her cabin; but for the most part she was on deck--or in the saloon, or in the reading-room--and for the most part Heriot was the person to whom she looked for conversation. If he had been a decade or two younger, he would probably have proposed to her long before they sighted Sandy Hook, and it surprised him that he did not succumb to the situation as it was. A woman is nowhere so dangerous, and nowhere is a man so susceptible, as at sea. The interminable days demand flirtation, if one is not to perish of boredom. Moonlight and water are notoriously potent, even when viewed for only half an hour; and at sea, the man and the girl look at the moonlight on the water together regularly every evening. And it is very becoming to the girl. Miss Pierways' face was always a disappointment to Heriot at breakfast. The remembrance of its factitious softness the previous night made its hardness in the sunshine look harder. He wondered if it was the remembrance of its hardness at breakfast that kept him from proposing to her when they loitered in the moonlight. He was certainly doing his best to fall in love with her, and everything conspired to assist him; but the days went on, and the momentous question remained unuttered. "We shall soon be there," she said one evening as they strolled about the deck after dinner. "I'm beginning to be keen. Have you noticed how everybody is saying, 'New York' now? At first no one alluded to it--we mightn't have been due for a year--and since yesterday nobody's talking of anything else!"