manner--her best manner--compared with his? "Are you prepared to be
responsible?"

"To you?"

"Dear no--to the young lady herself. I'm speaking of course of Miss
Mavis."

"Ah yes, my mother tells me you have her greatly on your mind."

"So has your mother herself--now."

"She's so good as to say so--to oblige you."

"She'd oblige me a great deal more by reassuring me. I know perfectly of
your knowing I've told her that Miss Mavis is greatly talked about."

"Yes, but what on earth does it matter?"

"It matters as a sign."

"A sign of what?"

"That she's in a false position."

Jasper puffed his cigar with his eyes on the horizon, and I had, a little
unexpectedly, the sense of producing a certain effect on him. "I don't
know whether it's _your_ business, what you're attempting to discuss but
it really strikes me it's none of mine. What have I to do with the
tattle with which a pack of old women console themselves for not being
sea-sick?"

"Do you call it tattle that Miss Mavis is in love with you?"

"Drivelling."

"Then," I retorted, "you're very ungrateful. The tattle of a pack of old
women has this importance, that she suspects, or she knows, it exists,
and that decent girls are for the most part very sensitive to that sort
of thing. To be prepared not to heed it in this case she must have a
reason, and the reason must be the one I've taken the liberty to call
your attention to."

"In love with me in six days, just like that?"--and he still looked away
through narrowed eyelids.

"There's no accounting for tastes, and six days at sea are equivalent to
sixty on land. I don't want to make you too proud. Of course if you
recognise your responsibility it's all right and I've nothing to say."

"I don't see what you mean," he presently returned.

"Surely you ought to have thought of that by this time. She's engaged to
be married, and the gentleman she's engaged to is to meet her at
Liverpool. The whole ship knows it--though _I_ didn't tell them!--and
the whole ship's watching her. It's impertinent if you like, just as I
am myself, but we make a little world here together and we can't blink
its conditions. What I ask you is whether you're prepared to allow her
to give up the gentleman I've just mentioned for your sake."

Jasper spoke in a moment as if he didn't understand. "For my sake?"

"To marry her if she breaks with him."

He turned his eyes from the horizon to my own, and I found a