‘You would not remain here for ever?’

’Certainly, if I could.  There is plenty to eat, and a bed to sleep on, and no one to be afraid of.  And though nobody knows me, everybody knows enough of me not to think that I ought to be taken to a police office because I have not gloves to my hands.’

‘Don’t you think it wearisome?’ he had asked.

’Everything is wearisome; but here I have a proud feeling of having paid my way.  To have settled in advance for your dinner for six weeks to come is a magnificent thing.  If I get too tired of it I can throw myself overboard.  You can’t even do that in London without the police being down upon you.  The only horror to me here is that there will so soon be an end to it.’

At that time he had not even heard her name, or known whether she were alone or joined to others.  Then he had inquired, and a female fellow-passenger had informed him that she was a Mrs. Smith,—­that she had seen better days, but had been married to a ne’er-do-well husband, who had drank himself to death within a year of their marriage, and that she was now going out to the colony, probably,—­so the old lady said who was the informant,—­in search of a second husband.  She was to some extent, the old lady said, in charge of a distant relative, who was then on board, with a respectable husband and children, and who was very much ashamed of her poor connection.  So much John Caldigate had heard.

Though he had heard this he did not feel inclined to tell it all to Dick Shand.  Dick had professed his intention of unravelling the mystery, but Caldigate almost thought that he would like to unravel it himself.  The woman was so constantly alone!  And then, though she was ill-dressed, untidy, almost unkempt on occasions, still, through it all, there was something attractive about her.  There was a brightness in her eye, and a courage about her mouth, which had made him think that, in spite of her appearance, she would be worth his attention—­just for the voyage.  When he had been speaking to herself they had been on the deck together, and it had been dusk and he had not been able to look her in the face; but while Shand had been speaking to him he had observed that she was very comely.  And this was the more remarkable because it seemed to him to be so evident that she made the worst rather than the best of herself.  She was quite a young woman;—­probably, he thought, not more than three or four and twenty; and she was there, with many young men round her, and yet she made no effort to attract attention.  When his eye had fallen upon her she had generally been quite alone, doing some piece of coarse and ordinary work.

‘I have had another conversation with her,’ said Shand to him that night.

‘Have you unravelled the mystery?’