The flushes and pallors chased each other over her face, and the sight of her pleasure in being beautiful charmed Staniford. “If she were used to worship she would have taken our adoration more arrogantly,” he said to his friend when they went on deck after breakfast. “I can place her; but one's circumstance doesn't always account for one in America, and I can't make out yet whether she's ever been praised for being pretty. Some of our hill-country people would have felt like hushing up her beauty, as almost sinful, and some would have gone down before it like Greeks. I can't tell whether she knows it all or not; but if you suppose her unconscious till now, it's pathetic. And black silks must be too rare in her life not to be celebrated by a high tumult of inner satisfaction. I'm glad we bowed down to the new dress.” “Yes,” assented Dunham, with an uneasy absence; “but--Staniford, I should like to propose to Captain Jenness our having service this morning. It is the eleventh Sunday after--” “Ah, yes!” said Staniford. “It is Sunday, isn't it? I _thought_ we had breakfast rather later than usual. All over the Christian world, on land and sea, there is this abstruse relation between a late breakfast and religious observances.” Dunham looked troubled. “I wish you wouldn't talk that way, Staniford, and I hope you won't say anything--” “To interfere with your proposition? My dear fellow, I am at least a gentleman.” “I beg your pardon,” said Dunham, gratefully. Staniford even went himself to the captain with Dunham's wish; it is true the latter assumed the more disagreeable part of proposing the matter to Hicks, who gave a humorous assent, as one might to a joke of doubtful feasibility. Dunham gratified both his love for social management and his zeal for his church in this organization of worship; and when all hands were called aft, and stood round in decorous silence, he read the lesson for the day, and conducted the service with a gravity astonishing to the sailors, who had taken him for a mere dandy. Staniford bore his part in the responses from the same prayer-book with Captain Jenness, who kept up a devout, inarticulate under-growl, and came out strong on particular words when he got his bearings through his spectacles. Hicks and the first officer silently shared another prayer-book, and Lydia offered half hers to Mr. Mason.