to
keep untarnished. How dared Diana Vernilands do this thing to her? What
foolishness had she herself been guilty of to put it in another's power
to thus injure her?

Her eyes were so blurred with tears that she did not notice at what
particular moment another occupant had usurped the chair of Major Sarle.
It was a man this time. April hastily seized a book and began to read.
He must have stolen up with the silence of a tiger, and he reminded her
of tigers somehow, though she could not quite tell why, except that he
was curiously powerful and graceful looking. His hair, which grew in a
thick short mat, was strongly sprinkled with silver, but his skin, though
brick-red, was unlined. She judged him to be a sailor-man, for he had
the clear and innocent eye of one who has looked long on great spaces.
These were her conclusions, made while diligently reading her book. He,
too, was busy reading in the same fashion, but, manlike, was slower in
his deductions. By the time she had finished with his hair he had not
got much further than her charming ankles. Certainly, he had ascertained
that she was a pretty woman before he took possession of his chair, but
that was merely instinct, the fulfilling of a human law. Detail, like
destruction, was to come after. He lingered over the first detail. They
were such very pretty ankles. It did not seem right that they should
be resting on the hard deck instead of on a canvas foot-rest. He
remembered that his own chair had a foot-rest, but it was in his cabin.
Should he go and fetch it? Dared he offer it to her? He was on
hail-fellow-well-met terms with lions and tigers, as April had curiously
divined, but having enjoyed fewer encounters with women, was slightly shy
of them. However, being naturally courageous, he might presently have
been observed emerging from a deck cabin with a canvas foot-rest in his
hand, and it was only the natural sequence of events that while
attempting to hitch it on his chair his guileless gaze should discover
that April's feet were without support. He looked so shy and kind for
such a sun-bitten, weather-hardened creature, that she had no heart to
refuse the friendly offer, even had she felt the inclination. Besides,
the advances made to her in the role of Lady Diana were very different to
those she had so often been obliged to repulse as April Poole.

She felt, too, that here was a man not trying to make friends with any
ulterior motive, but