Babington, to whom he was not quite sure that he ought not to feel himself engaged.  But the face that was clearest to him of all,—­and which became the dearer the nearer that he approached to a state of dozing,—­was that of Hester Bolton, whose voice he had hardly heard, who had barely spoken to him;—­the tips of whose fingers he had only just touched.  If there was any one thing fixed on his mind it was that, as soon as he had put together a large lump of gold, he would go back to Cambridge and win Hester Bolton to be his wife.  But yet what a singular woman was this Mrs. Smith!  As to marrying her, that of course had been a joke produced by the petulance of his snoring friend.  He began to dislike Shand, because he did snore so loudly, and drank so much bottled ale, and smelt so strongly of cavendish tobacco.  Mrs. Smith was at any rate much too good for Shand.  Surely she must have been a lady, or her voice would not have been sweet and silvery?  And though she did bristle roughly against the ill-usage of the world, and say strong things, she was never absolutely indelicate or even loud.  And she was certainly very interesting.  How did it come to pass that she was so completely alone, so poor, so unfriended and yet possessed of such gifts?  There certainly was a mystery, and it would certainly be his fate, and not the fate of Dick Shand, to unravel it.  The puzzle was much too delicate and too intricate for Dick Shand’s rough hands.  Then, giving his last waking thoughts for a moment to Hester Bolton, he went to sleep in spite of the snoring.

On the next morning, as soon as he was out of bed, he opened a small portmanteau in which he had put up some volumes the day before he left Pollington and to which he had not yet had recourse since the beginning of the voyage.  From these he would select one or two for the use of his new friend.  So he dragged out the valise from beneath the berth, while Shand abused him for the disturbance he made.  On the top, lying on the other volumes, which were as he had placed them, was a little book, prettily bound, by no means new, which he was sure had never been placed there by himself.  He took it up, and, standing in the centre of the cabin, between the light of the porthole and Dick’s bed, he examined it.  It was a copy of Thomson’s ‘Seasons’, and on the flyleaf was written in a girl’s hand the name of its late owner,—­Maria Shand.  The truth flashed upon him at once.  She must have gone down on that last night after he was in bed, and thus have made her little offering in silence, knowing that it would be hidden from him till he was far away from her.

‘What book is that?’ said Shand suddenly, emerging with his head and shoulders from the low berth.

‘A book of mine,’ said Caldigate, disconcerted for the moment.

‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘I am looking for something to lend to Mrs. Smith.’

‘That is Molly’s Thomson’s “Seasons,"’ said the brother, remembering, as we are so apt to remember the old thing that had met his eye so often in the old house.  ‘Where did you get it?’