“‘You say that by my bearing and looks I have, to all intents and purposes, declared myself a lover of Miss Rolfe. Now, suppose—and I pledge you my word that it is so—suppose all this was unintentional on my part; suppose that I have striven not to show just what you say I have shown,’—he paused again as before. ‘No,’ said he, resuming, in a half-musing way, as though he thought aloud, ‘I don’t see how I can lay the whole case before her’ (meaning me, I suppose). ‘Ah,’ said he, his face brightening, ‘let us suppose a case. Suppose I loved you dearly,—a _very_ supposable case, by the way,—and you did not suspect it.’ ‘_Not_ a supposable case; but go on.’ ‘Well,’ said he, smiling, ‘at that wharf, yonder, lies a ship ready to sail. I am to go in her to seek my fortune in the wide world, somewhere; ought I to speak, or would it not be nobler to bid you farewell with my secret locked in my breast?’ “I saw, of course, how matters stood. The supposed case was a purely imaginary one. His perplexity had been due to the difficulty of avoiding all allusion to his incognito. ‘I don’t pretend to know which would be the nobler course for _you_; but _I_ should want to know it, and hear it from your own lips, too, were you to be off for Japan in fifteen minutes. The sweetest music in the world to a woman’s ears is the voice of a man telling her that he loves her; and it is music of so potent a character, that it often melts a heart that was cold before.’ “That shot told. He threw his head back, like a horse taking the bit between his teeth. It was plain that he had formed a resolution of some sort. By the way, Jack, I could never understand how so transparent a man as the Don, showing his inmost feelings with every glance of his eye, and every movement of his features; with a face which was a barometer of his slightest emotions, could ever have kept a secret. Here is the S. T., on the other hand. Whisper a secret into _his_ ear, and it is like dropping a stone into an artesian well. It is the last you ever hear of it. There may be a subterranean splash, but you never see it. But the Don’s face always reminded me of a lake that the merest pebble causes to ripple from shore to shore. “Well, the reconnoissance was a perfect success, and all that was left, as I thought, was to retire under cover of a rattling skirmish fire.[1] Very naturally, I did not suspect that my position was mined. But it was; and I trod on the percussion fuse. “‘Well,’ said I, ‘I don’t suppose you would ever get tired of hearing me talk about Mary, but you have never heard the mother’s “warning voice” yet, and you know you came to the Fateful Argo to hear that.’