Cartoner was a dreamy man, with absorbed eyes, rather deeply sunk under a strong forehead.  His eyelids had that peculiarity which is rarely seen in the face of a man who is a nonentity.  They were quite straight, and cut across the upper curve of the pupil.  This gave a direct, stern look to dreamy eyes, which was odd.  After a pause, he turned slowly, and looked down at his companion with a vague interrogation in his glance.  He seemed to be wondering whether Mr. Mangles had spoken.  And Mangles met the glance with one of steady refusal to repeat his remark.  But Mangles spoke first, after all.

“Yes,” he said, “the women will be on deck soon—­and my sister Jooly.  You don’t know Jooly?”

He spoke with a slow and pleasant American accent.

“I saw you speaking to a young lady in the saloon after luncheon,” said Cartoner.  “She had a blue ribbon round her throat.  She was pretty.”

“That wasn’t Jooly,” said Mr. Mangles, without hesitation.

“Who was it?” asked Cartoner, with the simple directness of those who have no self-consciousness—­who are absorbed, but not in themselves, as are the majority of men and women.

“My niece, Netty Cahere.”

“She is pretty,” said Cartoner, with a spontaneity which would have meant much to feminine ears.

“You’ll fall in love with her,” said Mangles, lugubriously.  “They all do.  She says she can’t help it.”

Cartoner looked at him as one who has ears but hears not.  He made no reply.

“Distresses her very much,” concluded Mangles, dexterously shifting his cigar by a movement of the tongue from the port to the starboard side of his mouth.  Cartoner did not seem to be very much interested in Miss Netty Cahere.  He was a man having that air of detachment from personal environments which is apt to arouse curiosity in the human heart, more especially in feminine hearts.  People wanted to know what there was in Cartoner’s past that gave him so much to think about in the present.

The two men had not spoken again when Miss Netty Cahere came on deck.  She was accompanied by the fourth officer, a clean-built, clean-shaven young man, who lost his heart every time he crossed the Atlantic.  He was speaking rather earnestly to Miss Cahere, who listened with an expression of puzzled protest on her pretty face.  She had wondering blue eyes and a complexion of the most delicate pink and white which never altered.  She was slightly built, and carried herself in a subtly deprecating manner, as if her own opinion of herself were small, and she wished the world to accept her at that valuation.  She made no sign of having perceived her uncle, but nevertheless dismissed the fourth officer, who reluctantly mounted the ladder to the bridge, looking back as he went.

Mr. Mangles threw his cigar overboard.

“She don’t like smoke,” he growled.

Cartoner looked at the cigar, and absent-mindedly threw his cigarette after it.  He had apparently not made up his mind whether to go or stay, when Miss Cahere approached her uncle, without appearing to notice that he was not alone.