ng for an
opportunity to turn the conversation into another channel,--waiting with
an earnestness that was growing more and more apparent,--and as she
perceived this, and as she steadily talked to him, she assured herself,
with all the vehemence of which her nature was capable, that she and this
man were two people connected by business interests, and that she was
ready to discuss that business in a business way as soon as he could
speak. But still she did not yet give him the chance to speak.

The captain sat there, with his blue eyes fixed upon her, and, as she
looked at him, she knew him to be the personification of honor and
magnanimity, waiting until he could see that she was ready for him to
speak, ready to listen if she should speak, ready to meet her on any
ground--a gentleman, she thought, above all the gentlemen in the world.
And still she went on talking about Mrs. Cliff and Ralph.

Suddenly the captain rose. Whether or not he interrupted her in the
middle of a sentence, he did not know, nor did she know. He put his hat
upon a table and came toward her. He stood in front of her and looked
down at her. She looked up at him, but he did not immediately speak. She
could not help standing silently and looking up at him when he stood and
looked down upon her in that way. Then he spoke.

"Are you my wife?" said he.

"By all that is good and blessed in heaven or earth, I am," she answered.

Standing there, and looking up into his eyes, there was no other answer
for her to make.

* * * * *

Seldom has a poor, worn, tired, agitated woman kept what was to her a
longer or more anxious watch upon a closed door than Mrs. Cliff kept that
day. If even Ralph had appeared, she would have decoyed him into her own
room, and locked him up there, if necessary.

In about an hour after Mrs. Cliff began her watch, a tall man walked
rapidly out of the salon and went down the stairs, and then a woman came
running across the hall and into Mrs. Cliff's room, closing the door
behind her. Mrs. Cliff scarcely recognized this woman. She had Edna's
hair and face, but there was a glow and a glory on her countenance such
as Mrs. Cliff had never seen, or expected to see until, in the hereafter,
she should see it on the face of an angel.

"He has loved me," said Edna, with her arms around her old friend's neck,
"ever since we had been a week on the _Castor_."

Mrs. Cliff shivered and quivered with joy. Sh