"Yes," she continued, as if answering a question, "I know someone in just that position. And all at once it struck me--I had hardly thought of it before--what an idiot I should be if I let it affect my feelings or behaviour!" "I think no one would have suspected you of such narrowness." "Indeed I hope not!--Have you done your letters? Do come up and watch Mrs. Smithson playing at quoits--a sight to rout the brood of cares!" In the smoking-room on deck sat Dr. Derwent and Arnold Jacks, conversing gravely, with subdued voices. The Doctor had a smile on his meditative features; his eyes were cast down he looked a trifle embarrassed. "Forgive me," Arnold was saying, with some earnestness, "if this course seems to you rather irregular." "Not at all! Not at all! But I can only assure you of my honest inability to answer the question. Try, my dear fellow! _Solvitur quaerendo_!" Jacks' behaviour did, in fact, appear to the Doctor a little odd. That the young man should hint at his desire to ask Miss Derwent to marry him, or perhaps ask the parental approval of such a step, was natural enough; the event had been looming since the beginning of the voyage home. But to go beyond this, to ask the girl's father whether he thought success likely, whether he could hold out hopes, was scarcely permissible. It seemed a curious failure of tact in such a man as Arnold Jacks. The fact was that Arnold for the first time in his life, had turned coward. Having drifted into a situation which he had always regarded as undesirable, and had felt strong enough to avoid, he lost his head, and clutched rather wildly at the first support within reach. That Irene Derwent should become his wife was not a vital matter; he could contemplate quite coolly the possibility of marrying some one else, or, if it came to that, of not marrying anyone at all. What shook his nerves was the question whether Irene would be sure to accept him.