pity. Nor
would it lack the aspect of a particular, a personal misfortune. Dacres
was occupied in quite the natural normal degree with his charming self;
he would pass his misery on, and who would deserve to escape it less
than his mother-in-law?

I listened to Emily Morgan, who gleaned in the ship more information
about Dacres Tottenham's people, pay, and prospects than I had ever
acquired, and I kept an eye upon the pair which was, I flattered myself,
quite maternal. I watched them without acute anxiety, deploring the
threatening destiny, but hardly nearer to it than one is in the stalls
to the stage. My moments of real concern for Dacres were mingled more
with anger than with sorrow--it seemed inexcusable that he, with his
infallible divining-rod for temperament, should be on the point of
making such an ass of himself. Though I talk of the stage there was
nothing at all dramatic to reward my attention, mine and Emily Morgan's.
To my imagination, excited by its idea of what Dacres Tottenham's
courtship ought to be, the attentions he paid to Cecily were most
humdrum. He threw rings into buckets with her--she was good at that--and
quoits upon the 'bull' board; he found her chair after the decks were
swabbed in the morning and established her in it; he paced the deck with
her at convenient times and seasons. They were humdrum, but they were
constant and cumulative. Cecily took them with an even breath that
perfectly matched. There was hardly anything, on her part, to note--a
little discreet observation of his comings and goings, eyes scarcely
lifted from her book, and later just a hint of proprietorship, as the
evening she came up to me on deck, our first night in the Indian
Ocean. I was lying in my long chair looking at the thick, low stars and
thinking it was a long time since I had seen John.

'Dearest mamma, out here and nothing over your shoulders! You ARE
imprudent. Where is your wrap? Mr. Tottenham, will you please fetch
mamma's wrap for her?'

'If mamma so instructs me,' he said audaciously.

'Do as Cecily tells you,' I laughed, and he went and did it, while I by
the light of a quartermaster's lantern distinctly saw my daughter blush.

Another time, when Cecily came down to undress, she bent over me as I
lay in the lower berth with unusual solicitude. I had been dozing, and I
jumped.

'What is it, child?' I said. 'Is the ship on fire?'

'No, mamma, the ship is not on fire. There is nothing wrong. I'm so