with Miss Tyrrell, who might faint or go into hysterics: Peter knew better than that.
"It's merely your fancy," he said, soothingly, "Who can be there? They are all at the other end of the ship, dancing. Go on telling me about Alfred. I don't yet understand how I have managed to offend him."
"Are you really so dull," she said, with a slight touch of temper, "that you can't see that a man who thought he was going to meet the woman he was engaged to, and finds she has learnt to care for—for somebody else, is likely, even if he was the mildest man in the world—which Alfred is far from being—to betray some annoyance?"
"No, I see that," said Peter; "but—but he can't blame me. I couldn't help it!"
He said this, although her last speech had opened his eyes considerably: he knew now who Alfred was, and also that, in some moment of madness which was in one of the quarters of an hour he had not yet drawn, he must have placed himself in the position of Alfred's rival.
What was he to do? He could not, without brutality, tell this poor girl that he had not the smallest intention of depriving Alfred of her
