eck appeared to hesitate as to her course and then
solved the problem by going neither way. She dropped upon one of the
benches and looked up at me.

'I thought you said he would come back.'

'Young Nettlepoint? I see he didn't. Miss Mavis then has given him half
of her dinner.'

'It's very kind of her! She has been engaged for ages.'

'Yes, but that will soon be over.'

'So I suppose--as quick as we land. Every one knows it on Merrimac
Avenue. Every one there takes a great interest in it.'

'Ah, of course, a girl like that: she has many friends.'

'I mean even people who don't know her.'

'I see,' I went on: 'she is so handsome that she attracts attention,
people enter into her affairs.'

'She _used_ to be pretty, but I can't say I think she's anything
remarkable to-day. Anyhow, if she attracts attention she ought to be all
the more careful what she does. You had better tell her that.'

'Oh, it's none of my business!' I replied, leaving Mrs. Peck and going
above. The exclamation, I confess, was not perfectly in accordance with
my feeling, or rather my feeling was not perfectly in harmony with the
exclamation. The very first thing I did on reaching the deck was to
notice that Miss Mavis was pacing it on Jasper Nettlepoint's arm and
that whatever beauty she might have lost, according to Mrs. Peck's
insinuation, she still kept enough to make one's eyes follow her. She
had put on a sort of crimson hood, which was very becoming to her and
which she wore for the rest of the voyage. She walked very well, with
long steps, and I remember that at this moment the ocean had a gentle
evening swell which made the great ship dip slowly, rhythmically, giving
a movement that was graceful to graceful pedestrians and a more awkward
one to the awkward. It was the loveliest hour of a fine day, the clear
early evening, with the glow of the sunset in the air and a purple
colour in the sea. I always thought that the waters ploughed by the
Homeric heroes must have looked like that. I perceived on that
particular occasion moreover that Grace Mavis would for the rest of the
voyage be the most visible thing on the ship; the figure that would
count most in the composition of groups. She couldn't help it, poor
girl; nature had made her conspicuous--important, as the painters say.
She paid for it by the exposure it brought with it--the danger that
people would, as I had said to Mrs. Peck, enter into her affairs.

Jasper Nettlepoint went