"Upon your word?"

"Upon my word."

"Well, then--but you'll tell?"

"Not I. Come, go on."

"Lady's-maid in the family of a gentleman going abroad."

"Sarah, you can't be serious?" "I am serious. That was
the advertisement I answered."

"But I mean what you have been. You were not a lady's-maid all your life?"

She pulled her shawl closer round her and shivered.

"People are not born ladies' maids, I suppose?"

"Well, who are you, then? Have you no friends? What have you been?"

She looked up into the young man's face--a little less harsh
at that moment than it was wont to be--and creeping closer to him,
whispered--"Do you love me, Maurice?"

He raised one of the little hands that rested on the taffrail,
and, under cover of the darkness, kissed it.

"You know I do," he said. "You may be a lady's-maid or what you like,