He bowed and went his way.  For an hour or more he paced up and down on the other side of the deck, thinking.  It was, of course, impossible that this child should have come across with the hope of wresting from Norris Vine the paper which all their offers and eloquence had failed to entice him to give up.  And yet he did not understand her journey.  He knew very well that Phineas Duge had neither connections nor relatives in England.  Only a few weeks ago, in talking to Virginia at dinner-time, she had told him that she had no hope, at present at any rate, of visiting Europe.  Later in the day he sent a marconigram back to New York.  Perhaps Weiss would see something suggestive in the presence of this child upon the steamer!

* * * * *

“So you have found one friend on board,” Mildmay remarked, pausing before her chair.

“He is not a friend,” she answered, “and I do not like him.  That is why I told him that it made my head ache to talk.”

“Then I suppose—­” he began.

“You are to suppose nothing, but to sit down,” she said.  “Talk to me about London, please, or anything, or any place.  I am a little tired to-day.  I suppose I should say really a little depressed.  I cannot read, and I don’t like my thoughts.”

“You are such a child,” he said softly, “to talk like that.”

“I am nineteen,” she answered, “and sometimes I feel thirty-nine.”

“Nineteen!” he repeated, “and coming across to a strange country all by yourself.  The American spirit is a wonderful thing.”

She shook her head.

“It isn’t the American spirit,” she said simply.  “It is necessity.  I think that any girl, English or American, would prefer having some one to take care of her, to going about alone.”

“You make one feel inclined—­” he began, bending forward and looking into her eyes.

“After all,” she interrupted, “I think I had better read.”

“Please don’t!” he begged, “I promise to talk most seriously.  It is not my fault if I forgot for a moment.  You looked at me, you know, and we are not used to eyes like that in England.”

“You are either very silly,” she said, “or very impertinent.  I think that I shall send you away.”

“There is no one else,” he said, looking around, “to entertain you, and I am really going to try very hard to.”

“Then please reach me up those chocolates and begin,” she said.  “Tell me about where you live in the country.”

Mildmay, who had seven houses in different parts of the United Kingdom, was a little at a loss, but he talked to her about one, in which, by the by, he never lived, a gaunt grey stone building on the Northumbrian coast, whose windows were splashed with the spray of the North Sea, but whose gardens were famous throughout the north of England.  He very soon succeeded in interesting her.  She felt something absurdly restful in the sound of his strong, good-natured voice, with its slightly protective intonation.  They sat there until the luncheon gong rang, and then they rose and walked for a time together.  The sun had come out, and the grey sea was changing into blue.  The decks were dry.  The syren had ceased to blow.  The motion of the ship had become soothing, and the spray, which leaped now into the air, sparkled in the sunlight like diamond drops.