Mrs Wyllys then became silent for several minutes.  During the whole time, her eye never averted its gaze from the form of the calm and motionless being, who still maintained his attitude of repose, aloof from all that throng whom he had the address to make so entirely dependant on his authority.  It seemed, for these few minutes, that the organs of the governess drunk in the smallest peculiarity of his person, and as if they would never tire of their gaze.  Then, drawing a heavy and relieving breath, she once more remembered that she was not alone, and that others were silently, but observantly, awaiting the operation of her secret thoughts.  Without manifesting any embarrassment, however, at an absence of mind that was far too common to surprise her pupil, the governess resumed the discourse where she had herself dropped it, bending her look again on Wilder.

“Is Captain Heidegger, then, long of your acquaintance?” she demanded.

“We have met before.”

“It should be a name of German origin, by the sound.  Certain I am that it is new to me.  The time has been when few officers, of his rank, in the service of the King, were unknown to me, at least in name.  Is his family of long standing in England?”

“That is a question he may better answer himself,” said Wilder, glad to perceive that the subject of their discourse was approaching them, with the air of one who felt that none in that vessel might presume to dispute his right to mingle in any discourse that should please his fancy.  “For the moment, Madam, my duty calls me elsewhere.”

Wilder evidently withdrew with reluctance; and, had suspicion been active in the breasts of either of his companions, they would not have failed to note the glance of distrust with which he watched the manner that his Commander assumed in paying the salutations of the morning.  There was nothing, however, in the air of the Rover that should have given ground to such jealous vigilance.  On the contrary his manner, for the moment, was cold and abstracted he appeared to mingle in their discourse, much more from a sense of the obligations of hospitality than from any satisfaction that he might have been thought to derive from the intercourse.  Still, his deportment was kind, and his voice bland as the airs that were wafted from the healthful islands in view.

“There is a sight”—­he said, pointing towards the low blue ridges of the land—­“that forms the lands-man’s delight, and the seaman’s terror.”

“Are, then, seamen thus averse to the view of regions where so many millions of their fellow creatures find pleasure in dwelling?” demanded Gertrude, (to whom he more particularly addressed his words), with a frankness that would, in itself, have sufficiently proved no glimmerings of his real character had ever dawned on her own spotless and unsuspicious mind.