on shipboard.  He had none of the appearance of wearing out old clothes that usually prevails there, but dressed quite straight, as I heard some one say.  This gave him an assured, almost a triumphant air, as of a young man who would come best out of any awkwardness.  I expected to feel my companion’s hand loosen itself on my arm, as an indication that now she must go to him, and I was almost surprised she didn’t drop me.  We stopped as we met and Jasper bade us a friendly good-morning.  Of course the remark that we had another lovely day was already indicated, and it led him to exclaim, in the manner of one to whom criticism came easily, “Yes, but with this sort of thing consider what one of the others would do!”

“One of the other ships?”

“We should be there now, or at any rate tomorrow.”

“Well then I’m glad it isn’t one of the others”—­and I smiled at the young lady on my arm.  My words offered her a chance to say something appreciative, and gave him one even more; but neither Jasper nor Grace Mavis took advantage of the occasion.  What they did do, I noticed, was to look at each other rather fixedly an instant; after which she turned her eyes silently to the sea.  She made no movement and uttered no sound, contriving to give me the sense that she had all at once become perfectly passive, that she somehow declined responsibility.  We remained standing there with Jasper in front of us, and if the contact of her arm didn’t suggest I should give her up, neither did it intimate that we had better pass on.  I had no idea of giving her up, albeit one of the things I seemed to read just then into Jasper’s countenance was a fine implication that she was his property.  His eyes met mine for a moment, and it was exactly as if he had said to me “I know what you think, but I don’t care a rap.”  What I really thought was that he was selfish beyond the limits:  that was the substance of my little revelation.  Youth is almost always selfish, just as it is almost always conceited, and, after all, when it’s combined with health and good parts, good looks and good spirits, it has a right to be, and I easily forgive it if it be really youth.  Still it’s a question of degree, and what stuck out of Jasper Nettlepoint—­if, of course, one had the intelligence for it—­was that his egotism had a hardness, his love of his own way an avidity.  These elements were jaunty and prosperous, they were accustomed to prevail.  He was fond, very fond, of women; they were necessary to him—­that was in his type; but he wasn’t in the least in love with Grace Mavis.  Among the reflexions I quickly made this was the one that was most to the point.  There was a degree of awkwardness, after a minute, in the way we were planted there, though the apprehension of it was doubtless not in the least with himself.  To dissimulate my own share in it, at any rate, I asked him how his mother might be.

His answer was unexpected.  “You had better go down and see.”