’Not quite; but I have got the fact that there is a mystery.  She told me that you and I and she herself ought not to be here.  When I asked her why, she said that you and I ought to be gentlemen and that she ought to be a lady.  I told her that you and I were gentlemen, in spite of our trousers.  “Ah,” she said, “there comes the difference; I’m not a lady any longer!” When I contradicted her she snubbed me, and said that I hadn’t seen enough of the world to know anything about it.  But I’ll have it all out of her before I’ve done.’

For some days after that Caldigate kept himself aloof from Mrs. Smith, not at all because he had ceased to notice her or to think about her, but from a feeling of dislike to exhibit rivalry with his friend.  Shand was making himself very particular, and he thought that Shand was a fool for his pains.  He was becoming angry with Shand, and had serious thoughts of speaking to him with solemn severity.  What could such a woman be to him?  But at the bottom of all this there was something akin to jealousy.  The woman was good-looking, and certainly clever, and was very interesting.  Shand, for two or three evenings running, related his success; how Mrs. Smith had communicated to him the fact that she utterly despised those Cromptons, who were distant cousins of her late husband’s, and with whom she had come on board; how she preferred to be alone to having aught to do with them; how she had one or two books with her, and passed some hours in reading; and how she was poor, very poor, but still had something on which to live for a few weeks after landing.  But Caldigate fancied that there must be a betrayal of trust in these revelations, and though he was in truth interested about the woman, did not give much encouragement to his friend.

‘Upon my word,’ he said, ’I don’t seem to care so very much about Mrs. Smith’s affairs.’

‘I do,’ said Shand, who was thick-skinned and irrepressible.  ’I declared my intention of unravelling the mystery, and I mean to do it.’

‘I hope you are not too inquisitive?’

’Of course she likes to have some one to whom she can talk.  And what can people talk about on board ship except themselves?  A woman who has a mystery always likes to have it unravelled.  What else is the good of a mystery?’

He was thick-skinned and irrepressible, but Caldigate endeavoured to show his displeasure.  He felt that the poor woman was in coarse hands; and he thought that, had matters gone otherwise, he might have accepted, in a more delicate manner, so much confidence as she chose to vouchsafe.