“Did the lady with the brown eyes thank me for my attentions—­my very necessary attentions—­yesterday, for instance?” he answered, somewhat mollified, for the laugh and the voice would have thawed a human icicle, and, with all his faults, Arthur was not an icicle.

“No, she did not; she deferred doing so in order that she might do it better.  It was very kind of you to help me, and I daresay that you saved my life, and I—­I beg your pardon for being so cross, but being sea-sick always makes me cross, even to those who are kindest to me.  Do you forgive me?  Please forgive me; I really am quite unhappy when I think of my behaviour.”  And Mrs. Carr shot a glance at him that would have cleared the North-West Passage for a man-of-war.

“Please don’t apologize,” he said, humbly.  “I really have nothing to forgive.  I am aware that I took a liberty, as you put it, but I thought that I was justified by the circumstances.”

“It is not generous of you, Mr. Heigham, to throw my words into my teeth.  I had forgotten all about them.  But I will set your want of feeling against my want of gratitude, and we kiss and be friends.”

“I can assure you, Mrs. Carr, that there is nothing in the world I should like better.  When shall the ceremony come off?”

“Now you are laughing at me, and actually interpreting what I say literally, as though the English language were not full of figures of speech.  By that phrase,” and she blushed a little—­that is, her cheek took a deeper shade of coral—­“I meant that we would not cut each other after lunch.”

“You bring me from the seventh heaven of expectation into a very prosaic world; but I accept your terms, whatever they are.  I am conquered.”

“For exactly half an hour.  But let us talk sense.  Are you going to stop at Madeira?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know; till I get tired of it, I suppose.  Is it nice, Madeira?”

“Charming.  I live there half the year.”

“Ah, then I can well believe that it is charming.”

“Mr. Heigham, you are paying compliments.  I thought that you looked above that sort of thing.”

“In the presence of misfortune and of beauty”—­here he bowed—­“all men are reduced to the same level.  Talk to me from behind a curtain, or let me turn my back upon you, and you may expect to hear work-a-day prose—­but face to face, I fear that you must put up with compliment.”

“A neat way of saying that you have had enough of me.  Your compliments are two-edged.  Good-bye for the present.”  And she rose, leaving Arthur —­well, rather amused.

After this they saw a good deal of each other—­that is to say, they conversed together for at least thirty minutes out of every sixty during an average day of fourteen hours, and in the course of these conversations she learned nearly everything about him, except his engagement to Angela, and she shrewdly guessed at that, or, rather, at some kindred circumstance in his career.  Arthur, on the other hand, learned quite everything about her, for her life was open as the day, and would have borne repeating in the Times newspaper.  But nevertheless he found it extremely interesting.