“Anstruther appears to have arranged matters differently.  Wonder what pa will say when that Johnnie owns up about the court-martial.”

“Give it up, which is more than the girl will do, or I’m much mistaken.  Funny thing, you know, but I’ve a sort of hazy recollection of Anstruther’s name being mixed up with that of a Colonel’s wife at Hong Kong.  Fancy Ventnor was in it too, as a witness.  Stand by, and we’ll see something before we unload at Singapore.”

CHAPTER XVI

BARGAINS, GREAT AND SMALL

Lord Ventnor was no fool.  Whilst Iris was transforming herself from a semi-savage condition into a semblance of an ultra chic Parisienne—­the Orient’s dramatic costumier went in for strong stage effects in feminine attire—­Sir Arthur Deane told the Earl something of the state of affairs on the island.

His lordship—­a handsome, saturnine man, cool, insolently polite, and plentifully endowed with the judgmatical daring that is the necessary equipment of a society libertine—­counseled patience, toleration, even silent recognition of Anstruther’s undoubted claims for services rendered.

“She is an enthusiastic, high-spirited girl,” he urged upon his surprised hearer, who expected a very different expression of opinion.  “This fellow Anstruther is a plausible sort of rascal, a good man in a tight place too—­just the sort of fire-eating blackguard who would fill the heroic bill where a fight is concerned.  Damn him, he licked me twice.”

Further amazement for the shipowner.

“Yes, it’s quite true.  I interfered with his little games, and he gave me the usual reward of the devil’s apothecary.  Leave Iris alone.  At present she is strung up to an intense pitch of gratitude, having barely escaped a terrible fate.  Let her come back to the normal.  Anstruther’s shady record must gradually leak out.  That will disgust her.  In a week she will appeal to you to buy him off.  He is hard up—­cut off by his people and that sort of thing.  There you probably have the measure of his scheming.  He knows quite well that he can never marry your daughter.  It is all a matter of price.”

Sir Arthur willingly allowed himself to be persuaded.  At the back of his head there was an uneasy consciousness that it was not “all a matter of price.”  If it were he would never trust a man’s face again.  But Ventnor’s well-balanced arguments swayed him.  The course indicated was the only decent one.  It was humanly impossible for a man to chide his daughter and flout her rescuer within an hour of finding them.