"I don't think you quite grasp my point yet," said Meldon. "In a general way I shouldn't mind her looking at me any way she liked. I might have enjoyed it, if she'd done it well, as I expect she could. But under the existing circumstances I had to stop her; because, if she took to looking at me like that, she'd look quite another way at Mr. Simpkins, and then he wouldn't be inclined to marry her." "You're dead set on that match," said Callaghan. "I am. It's most important that it should come off." "She's a fine girl," said Callaghan. "She's too good for the like of Simpkins. He'll be tormenting her the way he does be tormenting everybody about the place." "Believe you me," said Meldon, "she'll know how to manage him." "She might," said Callaghan. "By the looks of her, when she left you this minute, I wouldn't say but she might." CHAPTER VIII. It was eight o'clock, and the evening was deliciously warm. Major Kent and Meldon sat in hammock chairs on the gravel outside Portsmouth Lodge. They had dined comfortably, and their pipes were lit. For a time neither of them spoke. Below them, beyond the wall which bounded the lawn, lay the waters of the bay, where the _Spindrift_, Major Kent's yacht, hung motionless over her mooring-buoy. The eyes of both men were fixed on her. "I feel," said Meldon at last, "like the village blacksmith." "There are four in Ballymoy," said the Major. "Reilly is the man who works for me. If you feel like him, I'm sorry for you. He's generally drunk at this hour." "I refer," said Meldon, "to Longfellow's village blacksmith. You're not a highly-educated man, I know, but I thought you'd have heard of him. "'The muscles of his brawny arms Were strong as iron bands.' It's a poem which most people learn while at school. I am sometimes tempted to think that you never were at school." "I don't see, J. J., that your muscles are anything particular to swagger about." "I wasn't referring to my muscles," said Meldon. "The resemblance I speak of lies in the fact that I've 'earned my night's repose.' The village blacksmith felt that he deserved his after listening to his daughter singing in the local church choir. I've undergone an even severer nerve strain. I've practically arranged the marriage between Simpkins and the murderess." "I wish very much that I knew exactly what you've been doing all day, J. J. I always feel nervous when you go out alone. I never know--"