He thought he had never seen anything half so enchanting as the face she raised to his. The big black hat was a most becoming foil to her fresh young beauty. There was a smile on the rosy lips--half arch, half wistful. The full light of the sunny day shone on her, but her beauty was so flawless that the severe test only enhanced its perfection. His heart gave a fierce throb, half pain, half pleasure. "You are vexed with me?" said Leonora, in a soft, inquiring voice. "Oh, no, no," he replied, quickly. "No?" she said. "But, then, you certainly are vexed with some one. If it is not with me, then it must be with Captain Lancaster." To this proposition, that was made with an air of conviction, he remained gravely silent. "Silence gives consent," said the girl, after waiting vainly for him to speak, and then he bowed coldly. "Then it is he," she said. "Ah, dear me! what has Captain Lancaster done?" "That is between him and me," said the soldier, with a sulky air. The red lips dimpled. Leonora rather enjoyed the situation. "You will not tell me?" she said. "I beg your pardon--no," he answered, resolutely. "Then I will tell you," she said: "you think he has treated you unfairly, that he has taken advantage of you." De Vere stared. "How can you possibly know, Miss West?" he asked, pulling sulkily at the ends of his dark mustache. "I am very good at guessing," demurely. "You did not guess this. He told you, I presume," bitterly. "He--if you mean Captain Lancaster--told me nothing. I was telling him something. Why should you be vexed at him because I went and stood there and talked to him?" indignantly. "I was not," rather feebly. "Do you really deny it?" she asked him, incredulously. "Well, since you put it so seriously, yes, I was vexed about it; but I don't understand how you could know it," he answered, flushing a dark red. "I will tell you how I know," she said, coloring crimson also. "I heard all that you and Captain Lancaster said about me that first night we came aboard." "Oh, by Jove! you didn't, though?" he exclaimed, radiant, and trying to meet the glance of the beautiful eyes. But with her shy avowal she had let the white lids drop bashfully over them. De Vere was not one bit disconcerted by what she had told him. He knew that all she had heard that night had been to his advantage. "And so all this while you knew that I thought--" he began, boldly. "That you thought me rather pretty--yes," she replied, modestly. "I knew also that I was a _mésalliance_ for you, and that Captain Lancaster's future was 'cut and dried,'" bitterly. He gazed at her in wonder. "And you have kept it to yourself all this while, Miss West?" "Yes, because I was ashamed to confess the truth. I did not want to be thought an eavesdropper, for I did not really wish to hear. It was an accident, but it has weighed on my mind ever since, and at last I made up my mind to 'fess, as the children say." He gazed at her with ever-increasing admiration.