he was stationed in their own
county at Devonport. Beyond them he didn't know a soul in the country,
and the soft western brogue of Gabrielle fascinated him. He encouraged
her to talk, and she was quite willing to do so, telling of Roscarna
and the hills and the river, of her lessons with Mr. Considine, of her
secret bathes in the lake and other things as intimate which would have
persuaded him that she was an exceedingly fast young woman if he had
not been already convinced that she was nothing but a child.

It gave her a great happiness to talk about Roscarna in this alien
land. And Radway was glad to listen if only for the pleasure of
hearing her voice.

Radway was a straight-forward young man, twenty-four or five years of
age. That he was eminently presentable one deduces from the fact that
the Halbertons condescended to entertain him, though Lady Halberton, as
the years went by, was known to make social sacrifices for the sake of
the dear girls. I do not think it is profitable to seek for much
subtlety in Radway. It is better to accept him as the clean sturdy
type of youth that Dartmouth turns afloat every year. Physically he
was fair (Arthur Payne also was fair), with a straight mouth, excellent
teeth, and blue, humorous eyes.

There is nothing younger for its age than a naval sub-lieutenant. In
the traditional simplicity of seamen there is more than a tradition;
for the inhabitants of a ship are a small island community in which
grown men live and accept a glorified version of life at a public
school until they reach the flag-list, or are shot out into the world
on a pension that is inadequate for its enjoyment. The one subject on
which the wardroom claims to be authoritative is that of women; and
Radway was already as well acquainted with the Irish aspects of the
sport as with the Japanese. In daring, as in physical perfection, the
wardroom of the _Pennant_ considered that the daughters of the Irish
squirearchy took some beating; and Radway had heard, no doubt, stories
of many wayward and passionate episodes with which the hospitality of
Irish country houses had been enlivened. Gabrielle was the first of
the kind that he had met, her frankness, her beauty, and her sudden,
enchanting intimacy seemed to tell him that he was in luck's way and on
the edge of an adventure. It was not the part of a sailor to miss
opportunities of experience. He couldn't guess, poor devil, what the
end would be, but na