"Then, if you are really so diffident, I—I must tell you that if you were to ask a certain question once more, I might—I don't say I should, but I might—meet it with a different answer!"
"Good heavens!" he ejaculated, involuntarily.
"But you must not ask me yet—not just yet. I must have time to consider. I must tell papa before I decide anything. You will wait a little longer, won't you, Peter?"
"Yes," he said, feeling limp, "I'll wait. I'd rather!"
She smiled radiantly upon him, and then fled lightly up the companion, leaving him with fresh cause for uneasiness. He could no longer doubt that, for some reason, she expected him to propose to her, which it seemed he had already, in one of those confounded extra minutes, been unprincipled enough to do! Now she had gone to inform her father, the Judge, and he would have the disagreeable task of disabusing them before long!
At this point he started, believing that he was visited by an apparition; for a cabin-door opened, and Miss Davenport came out and stood before him.
But she was so obviously flesh and blood—and so dry—that he soon saw that all his anxiety on her account had been superfluous.
"Then you—you didn't jump overboard after all?" he faltered, divided between relief and annoyance at having been made to come back, as it were, on false pretences.
"You know who prevented me, and by what arguments!" she said, in a low strained voice.