"There's no accounting for tastes, and six days at sea are equivalent to
sixty on land. I don't want to make you too proud. Of course if you
recognise your responsibility it's all right and I've nothing to say."
"I don't see what you mean," he presently returned.
"Surely you ought to have thought of that by this time. She's engaged to
be married, and the gentleman she's engaged to is to meet her at
Liverpool. The whole ship knows it--though _I_ didn't tell them!--and
the whole ship's watching her. It's impertinent if you like, just as I
am myself, but we make a little world here together and we can't blink
its conditions. What I ask you is whether you're prepared to allow her
to give up the gentleman I've just mentioned for your sake."
Jasper spoke in a moment as if he didn't understand. "For my sake?"
"To marry her if she breaks with him."
He turned his eyes from the horizon to my own, and I found a strange
expression in them. "Has Miss Mavis commissioned you to go into that?"
"Not in the least."
"Well then, I don't quite see--!"
"It isn't as from another I make it. Let it come from yourself--_to_
yourself."
"Lord, you must think I lead myself a life!" he cried as in compassion
for my simplicity. "That's a question the young lady may put to me any
moment it pleases her.
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