The second-class deck was fairly full. There the poor "seconds" sat, like animals in a zoo, behind a bar, for us superior mortals to stare at. They were seated oddly, on bags or undersized stools, so that they looked like wrong-doers in the stocks. The very funnel (which soared up from the midst of the first-class deck) showed its contempt by visiting them with a copious and increasing plague of large black grits, until they were sootier than the damned in hell. And after all, had not each and every one of them committed the deadly sin of being either unwilling or unable to pay the extra half-crown or so which would have made them, for three or four glorious hours, the equals of such notables as myself and the future Lady Ruddington? They had the air of accepting their punishment as just. I picked out two unabashed and unassociated males, either of whom might be Susan’s "Him." Keeping my eyes still on the second-class deck, but directing my voice towards Susan’s cheek, I asked: "Which?" "The gentleman that’s staring so, Miss." "Can’t you see there are two staring?" I said. "Which do you mean? Is it the one with the peaked cap and the gilt buttons--the one that’s rubbing the back of his head against the side of the life-boat?" "Oh, no, Miss! It’s the gentleman with the cigar and the thick stockings." The fact that the puffer of the cigar was staring at us without the slightest attempt at dissimulation made it easier for me to take him in from top to toe. The top was hidden in a grey cloth cap, and the toe in a brown boot of a large size. The creature was large-handed, large-featured, and (as I afterwards found) large-laughed and large-voiced. He wore a grey Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, continued downwards by the thick grey stockings which had vied with the cigar in Susan’s regard. There was a bold ring on the little (or, rather, on the smallest) finger of his left hand. His whole port and mien were idle and evil; and never in my life have I seen more horrid legs. At a first glance his coarseness was so evidently the coarseness of a low-bred shopman or bookie, that I nearly turned on Susan to rebuke her sharply for wasting my time. But, at a second glance, I became conscious of a sickening doubt. Had I not seen this identical coarseness before, in very high places? Apart from his one unilluminating letter to Susan, all my meagre knowledge of Lord Ruddington has been collected at second or third hand. Both Alice and I have heard that he is reticent, aloof, rather studious; and the stray reports of him which have reached Traxelby have been pretty much to the same effect. But our informants may have been wrong. Or, as our information is a year old, Lord Ruddington may have changed for the worse. If so, he has galloped downhill at the devil’s own pace. When I had seen a good deal more than enough, I turned my back on him pointedly, and said to Susan: