"I dare say she was. Some people get drunk without showing it. Miss Armstrong, I am no longer surprised that you should run away." She smiled, but with mingled sadness and bitterness, and said, "If my father comes in with Bax and the constable, I shall walk out, and I beg you to give me your protection, Mr. Hardy, and to save me from seeing him." Hardy bowed, but made no answer. He was a man of careless thoughts and many heedless views in all sorts of directions, a sailor, in short, whose horizon was salt and limited, yet he could not help feeling shocked at the extravagance of fear and dislike which the half-pay captain had by bitter neglect and a Christless marriage excited in the breast of a girl who seemed a true-hearted, heroic young woman, beautiful of figure, and with a face of romantic interest. "Can the constable do anything if he comes?" she asked. "Oh, yes," answered the sailor, "he can walk out. In what law book is it written that a man may not possess his own? That is yours," said he, pointing to the trunk, "and if Constable Rogers touches it we'll have him before the magistrates, of whom, by the way, my father is one." He looked at her very thoughtfully, and she looked at him till her gray eyes drooped to her lap. The Persian kitten had left the room, and she had nothing to toy with but her handkerchief. Now, by the expression of Hardy's face, you could have said that he fastened his eyes upon her, not out of feeling, nor out of the sense of being alone with her, nor of the enjoyment of the spectacle of her matchless figure, but because he was maturing thoughts concerning her well-being. He had certainly a most honest face, and you tasted the manliness of his nature in each utterance and in every smile. "I want to talk to you," said he, "about our arrival in London. I must get you close to the docks. I'll put you in the way of making a few inquiries whilst I am busy on board my ship; meanwhile I shall be asking questions." "Oh, Mr. Hardy, what should I have done had I not met you?" she cried, in an irrepressible outburst of gratitude, and again he saw tears in her eyes, for she had lived hard and had fared hard for some years now, and kindness easily broke her down, as one long divorced from home will melt on her return to the sound of the music that her mother loved and sang to her. "Do you know London?" said the sailor. "I was never in London," she answered. "Have you ever seen a ship?" "I came home in a ship from India," she replied, "but I was too young to remember the vessel."