towards the close of the evening, will you? Excuse me, but she is the
thorough-bred of the ship. And if I have only one hop down the
promenade, I want it to be with a girl who'll remind me of some one that
is making West Kensington worth inhabiting. Only think, Marmion, of a
girl like her--a graduate in arts, whose name and picture have been in
all the papers--being willing to make up with me, Dick Hungerford! She
is as natural and simple as a girl can be, and doesn't throw Greek roots
at you, nor try to convince you of the difference between the songs of
the troubadours and the sonnets of Petrarch. She doesn't care a rap
whether Dante's Beatrice was a real woman or a principle; whether James
the First poisoned his son; or what's the margin between a sine and a
cosine. She can take a fence in the hunting-field like a bird--! Oh,
all right, just hold still, and I'll unfasten it." And he struggled with
a recalcitrant buckle. "Well, you'll not forget about Miss Treherne,
will you? She ought to go just as she is. Fancy-dress on her would be
gilding the gold; for, though she isn't surpassingly beautiful, she is
very fine, very fine indeed. There, now, you're yourself again, and look
all the better for it."

By this time I was again in my uniform, and I sat down, and smoked, and
looked at Hungerford. His long gossip had been more or less detached,
and I had said nothing. I understood that he was trying, in his blunt,
honest way, to turn my thoughts definitely from Mrs. Falchion to Belle
Treherne; and he never seemed to me such a good fellow as at that moment.
I replied at last: "All right, Hungerford; I'll be your deputation, your
ambassador, to Miss Treherne. What time shall we see you on deck?"

"About 11.40--just in time to trip a waltz on the edge of eight bells."

"On the edge of Sunday, my boy."