“_Either_ of us?” echoed Dunham. He roused himself. “Oh, go to sleep; _go_ to sleep!” cried Staniford. XV. The foreboded storm did not come so soon as had been feared, but the beautiful weather which had lasted so long was lost in a thickened sky and a sullen sea. The weather had changed with Staniford, too. The morning after the events last celebrated, he did not respond to the glance which Lydia gave him when they met, and he hardened his heart to her surprise, and shunned being alone with her. He would not admit to himself any reason for his attitude, and he could not have explained to her the mystery that at first visibly grieved her, and then seemed merely to benumb her. But the moment came when he ceased to take a certain cruel pleasure in it, and he approached her one morning on deck, where she stood holding fast to the railing where she usually sat, and said, as if there had been no interval of estrangement between them, but still coldly, “We have had our last walk for the present, Miss Blood. I hope you will grieve a little for my loss.” She turned on him a look that cut him to the heart, with what he fancied its reproach and its wonder. She did not reply at once, and then she did not reply to his hinted question. “Mr. Staniford,” she began. It was the second time he had heard her pronounce his name; he distinctly remembered the first. “Well?” he said. “I want to speak to you about lending that book to Mr. Hicks. I ought to have asked you first.” “Oh, no,” said Staniford. “It was yours.” “You gave it to me,” she returned. “Well, then, it was yours,--to keep, to lend, to throw away.” “And you didn't mind my lending it to him?” she pursued. “I--” She stopped, and Staniford hesitated, too. Then he said, “I didn't dislike your lending it; I disliked his having it. I will acknowledge that.” She looked up at him as if she were going to speak, but checked herself, and glanced away. The ship was plunging heavily, and the livid waves were racing before the wind. The horizon was lit with a yellow brightness in the quarter to which she turned, and a pallid gleam defined her profile. Captain Jenness was walking fretfully to and fro; he glanced now at the yellow glare, and now cast his eye aloft at the shortened sail. While Staniford stood questioning whether she meant to say anything more, or whether, having discharged her conscience of an imagined offense, she had now reached one of her final, precipitous silences, Captain Jenness suddenly approached them, and said to him, “I guess you'd better go below with Miss Blood.”