Should she carry with her wherever she went this name which had been so smirched—­the identity of Sheila Macklin, the ghost of whose past misfortune might rise to shame her at any time—­the girl could never be happy.  Did Tunis Latham succeed in getting the Balls to take Sheila in and give her a home, this story that so bowed her down would continually threaten its revelation, like a pirate ship hovering in the offing!

And there was, too, a deeper reason why he could not introduce Sheila Macklin to Big Wreck Cove folk.  It was no reason he could give the girl at this time.  In some ways the captain of the Seamew was wise enough.  He felt that this was no time to put forward his personal and particular desires.  Enough that she had admitted him to her friendship and had given him her confidence.

She had accepted him in all good faith in a brotherly sense.  He dared not spoil his influence with her by revealing a deeper interest.

“We may as well look at this thing calmly and sensibly,” Tunis said, answering her statement of what was indubitably a fact.  “It is quite true my old neighbors would not accept you as Sheila Macklin.  But they need you; no other kind of a girl would so suit their need.  And you could not help loving them; nor they you, once they learned to know you.”

“I am sure I should love them,” breathed Sheila.

“Then, as you are just the person they want and their home is just the place you need for shelter, I am going to take you back with me.”

“Oh, Captain Latham!  We—­we can’t do it.  My name—­somebody will some time be sure to hear about me, and the dreadful secret will come out.”

“No, it won’t,” said Tunis doggedly.  “There will be no secret, not such as you mean, to come out.”

She gazed upon him in open-eyed surprise, her lips parted, her face aglow.

“You mean—­”

“We’ll leave Sheila Macklin sitting on this bench, if you will agree.  She need never be traced from this point.  Let her drop out of the ken of the whole world that knew her.  The name can only bring you harm; it has brought you harm.  Through it you are threatened with trouble, with disaster.  Your whole future is menaced through that name and the stain upon it.”

She looked at him still, scarcely breathing.  Latham did not realize the power he held over this girl at the moment.  He was to her a living embodiment of the All Good.  Almost any suggestion, no matter how reckless, he might have made, would have found an echo in her heart and the will to do it.

To few is vouchsafed that knowledge which makes all clear before the mental vision.  Tunis Latham’s perspicacity did not compass this thing.  He did not grasp the psychological moment, as we moderns call it, and consummate there and then the only reasonable and righteous plan that it was given him to complete.

The captain of the Seamew was a young man very much in love.  He did not question this fact at all.  But in his wildest imaginings he could never have believed that the girl beside him on this bench returned his passion, that she would even listen to his protestations of affection.  Not for a long time, at least.