"Not interest me!" she murmured at last. "Oh, how could you--how _could_ you keep this from me? Can't you see--can't you guess what a difference it has made in my feelings?" It might be very dull of him, but he could _not_ perceive why the fact of Miss Davenport's engagement to Alfred should affect Miss Tyrrell so strangely as this! "I may call you 'Peter' now," she said. "Oh, Peter, _how_ happy you have made me! Why did you keep silence so long? It was too quixotic! Don't you understand even yet?" "No," said Peter blankly, "I'm afraid I don't." "Then, if you are really so diffident, I--I must tell you that if you were to ask a certain question once more, I might--I don't say I should, but I might--meet it with a different answer!" "Good heavens!" he ejaculated, involuntarily. "But you must not ask me yet--not just yet. I must have time to consider. I must tell papa before I decide anything. You _will_ wait a little longer, won't you, Peter?" "Yes," he said, feeling limp, "I'll wait. I'd rather!" She smiled radiantly upon him, and then fled lightly up the companion, leaving him with fresh cause for uneasiness. He could no longer doubt that, for some reason, she expected him to propose to her, which it seemed he had already, in one of those confounded extra minutes, been unprincipled enough to do! Now she had gone to inform her father, the Judge, and he would have the disagreeable task of disabusing them before long! At this point he started, believing that he was visited by an apparition; for a cabin-door opened, and Miss Davenport came out and stood before him. But she was so obviously flesh and blood--and so dry--that he soon saw that all his anxiety on her account had been superfluous. "Then you--you didn't jump overboard after all?" he faltered, divided between relief and annoyance at having been made to come back, as it were, on false pretences. "You know who prevented me, and by what arguments!" she said, in a low strained voice. "_Do_ I?" he said, helplessly. "Who should, if you do not? Did not you implore me not to leave you, and declare that, if I would only have courage and wait, we should be happy even yet? And I _did_ wait. For what, I ask you, Peter Tourmalin--for _what_?" "It's really no use asking _me_," he said, "for I've no idea!" "I waited--to discover that all this time you have had a secret understanding with another; that you are about to transfer your fickle affections to--to that fair girl! Don't deny it, Peter! I was listening. I see it all--all!" "I wish to goodness _I_ did!" he said. "I never was in such a muddle as this in my life. I can only assure you that if that young lady really imagines that I am, or can be, anything more to her than a friend, she is entirely mistaken. I was just about to go up and explain as much to her father!" "You are not deceiving me?" she asked, earnestly. "You are _sure_?" "I will swear it, if you wish!" he replied.