d undertaken it. Though she
was frightened, still she must go on. 'I hope you will excuse me, Mr.
Caldigate.'

'I am sure you will not say anything that I cannot excuse.'

'Don't you think--' Then she paused. She had looked into his face again,
and was so little satisfied that she did not dare to go on. He would not
help her in the least, but stood there looking at her, with something
of a smile stealing over the hardness of his face, but with such an
expression that the smile was even worse than the hardness.

'Were you going to speak to me about another lady, Mrs. Callander?'

'I was. That is what I was going to speak of--'

She was anxious to remonstrate against that word lady, but her courage
failed her.

'Then don't you think that perhaps you had better leave it alone. I am
very much obliged to you, and all that kind of thing; and as to myself,
I really shouldn't care what you said. Any good advice would be taken
most gratefully,--if it didn't affect any one else. But you might say
things of the lady in question which I shouldn't bear patiently.'

'She can't be your equal.'

'I won't hear even that patiently. You know nothing about her, except
that she is a second-class passenger,--in which matter she is exactly my
equal. If you come to that, don't you think that you are degrading
yourself in coming here and talking to me? I am not your equal.'

'But you are.'

'And so is she, then. We shan't arrive at anything, Mrs. Callander, and
so you had better give it up.' Whereupon she did give it up and retreat
to her own part of the ship, but not with a very good grace.

They had certainly become very intimate,--John Caldigate and Mrs. Smith;
and there could be no doubt that, in the ordinary language of the world,
he was making a fool of himself. He did in fact know nothing about her
but what she told herself, and this amounted to little more than three
statements, which might or might not be true,--that she had gone on the
stage in opposition to her friends,--that she had married an actor, who
had treated her with great cruelty,--and that he had died of drink. And
with each of these stories there had been an accompaniment of mystery.
She had not told him her maiden name, nor what had been the condition of
her parents, nor whether they were living, nor at what theatres she and
her husband had acted, nor when he had died. She had expressed a hope
that she might get an engagement in the colonies, but she had not