As before, his draft was honoured immediately: he found himself on a steamer-chair in a sheltered passage between two of the deck-cabins. It was night, and he could not clearly distinguish any objects around him for some little time, owing to the darkness; but from a glimmer of white drapery that was faintly visible close by, he easily inferred that there was another chair adjoining his, which could only be occupied by Miss Tyrrell. He could just hear the ship's band playing a waltz at the further end of the ship; it was one of the evenings when there had been dancing, and he and Miss Tyrrell were sitting out together. All this he realised instantly, and not without a thrill of interest and expectation, which, however, the first words she uttered were sufficient to reduce to the most prosaic perplexity. "What have I said?" she was moaning, in a voice hardly recognisable from emotion and the fleecy wrap in which her face was muffled,--"oh! what _have_ I said?" Peter was naturally powerless to afford her any information on this point, even if she really required it; he made a rapid mental note to the effect that their intimacy had evidently made great progress since their last interview. "I'm afraid," he said, deciding that candour was his only course, "I can't exactly tell you what you did say; for, as a matter of fact, I didn't quite catch it." "Ah! you say that to spare me," she murmured: "you _must_ have heard; but, promise me you will forget it?" "Willingly," said Peter, with the greatest readiness to oblige; "I will consider it forgotten." "If I could but hope that!" she said. "And yet," she added, recklessly, "why should I care what I say?" "To be sure," agreed Tourmalin at random, "why _should_ you, you know?" "You must have seen from the first that I was very far from being happy?" "I must confess," said Peter, with the air of a man whom nothing escaped, "that I _did_ observe that." "And you were right! Was it unnatural that I should be nothing but grateful to the chance which first brought us together?" "Not at all," said Peter, delighted to feel himself on solid ground again; "indeed, if I may speak for myself, I have even greater reason to feel grateful to that monkey." "To _what_ monkey?" she exclaimed. "Why, naturally, my dear Miss Tyrrell, to the animal which was the unconscious instrument in making us acquainted. You surely cannot have forgotten already that it _was_ a monkey?" She half rose with an impetuous movement, the mantilla fell from her face, and, even in the faint starlight, he could perceive that, beautiful as that face undoubtedly was, it was as certainly not the face of Miss Tyrrell! "_You_ seem to have forgotten a great deal," she retorted, with a suppressed sob in her voice, "or you would at least remember that my name is Davenport. Why you should choose to call me Miss Tyrrell, whom I don't even know by sight, I can't conceive!"