Mrs. Falchion had seen the change in me, and, I am sure, guessed the new
direction of my thoughts, and knew that I wished to take refuge in a new
companionship--a thing, indeed, not easily to be achieved, as I felt now;
for no girl of delicate and proud temper would complacently regard a
hasty transference of attention from another to herself. Besides, it
would be neither courteous nor reasonable to break with Mrs. Falchion
abruptly. The error was mine, not hers. She had not my knowledge of the
immediate circumstances, which made my position morally untenable. She
showed unembarrassed ignorance of the change. At the same time I caught
a tone of voice and a manner which showed she was not actually oblivious,
but was touched in that nerve called vanity; and from this much feminine
hatred springs.

I made up my mind to begin a course of scientific reading, and was seated
in my cabin, vainly trying to digest a treatise on the pathology of the
nervous system, when Hungerford appeared at the door. With a nod, he
entered, threw himself down on the cabin sofa, and asked for a match.
After a pause, he said: "Marmion, Boyd Madras, alias Charles Boyd, has
recognised me."

I rose to get a cigar, thus turning my face from him, and said: "Well?"

"Well, there isn't anything very startling. I suppose he wishes I had
left him in the dingey on No Man's Sea. He's a fool."

"Indeed, why?"

"Marmion, are your brains softening? Why does he shadow a woman who
wouldn't lift her finger to save him from battle, murder, or sudden