“Don’t press me, Launce.”  She dropped on the locker.  “See!” she said.  “It makes me tremble only to think of it!”

“Who are you afraid of, darling?  Not your father, surely?”

“Poor papa!  I wonder whether he would be hard on me for the first time in his life?” She stopped; her moistening eyes looked up imploringly in Launce’s face.  “Don’t press me!” she repeated faintly.  “You know it’s wrong.  We should have to confess it—­and then what would happen?” She paused again.  Her eyes wandered nervously to the deck.  Her voice dropped to its lowest tones.  “Think of Richard!” she said, and shuddered at the terrors which that name conjured up.  Before it was possible to say a quieting word to her, she was again on her feet.  Richard’s name had suddenly recalled to her memory Launce’s mysterious allusion, at the outset of the interview, to the owner of the yacht.  “What was that you said about Richard just now?” she asked.  “You saw something (or heard something) strange while papa was telling his story.  What was it?”

“I noticed Richard’s face, Natalie, when your father told us that the man overboard was not one of the pilot-boat’s crew.  He turned ghastly pale.  He looked guilty—­”

“Guilty?  Of what?”

“He was present—­I am certain of it—­when the sailor was thrown into the sea.  For all I know, he may have been the man who did it.”

Natalie started back in horror.

“Oh, Launce!  Launce! that is too bad.  You may not like Richard—­you may treat Richard as your enemy.  But to say such a horrible thing of him as that—­It’s not generous.  It’s not like you.”

“If you had seen him, you would have said it too.  I mean to make inquiries—­in your father’s interests as well as in ours.  My brother knows one of the Commissioners of Police, and my brother can get it done for me.  Turlington has not always been in the Levant trade—­I know that already.”

“For shame, Launce! for shame!”

The footsteps on deck were audible coming back.  Natalie sprang to the door leading into the cabin.  Launce stopped her, as she laid her hand on the lock.  The footsteps went straight on toward the stern of the vessel.  Launce clasped both arms round her.  Natalie gave way.

“Don’t drive me to despair!” he said.  “This is my last opportunity.  I don’t ask you to say at once that you will marry me, I only ask you to think of it.  My darling! my angel! will you think of it?”

As he put the question, they might have heard (if they had not been too completely engrossed in each other to listen) the footsteps returning—­one pair of footsteps only this time.  Natalie’s prolonged absence had begun to surprise her aunt, and had roused a certain vague distrust in Richard’s mind.  He walked back again along the deck by himself.  He looked absently in the main cabin as he passed it.  The store-room skylight came next.  In his present frame of mind, would he look absently into the store-room too?