"Well, my dear girl, perhaps that is hardly the correct phrase from your point of view. Yet you cannot fail to remember that Lord Ventnor—"
"Father, dear," said Iris solemnly, but in a voice free from all uncertainty, "my affianced husband stands here! We plighted our troth at the very gate of death. It was ratified in the presence of God, and has been blessed by Him. I have made no compact with Lord Ventnor. He is a base and unworthy man. Did you but know the truth concerning him you would not mention his name in the same breath with mine. Would he, Robert?"
Never was man so perplexed as the unfortunate shipowner. In the instant that his beloved daughter was restored to him out of the very depths of the sea, he was asked either to undertake the rôle of a disappointed and unforgiving parent, or sanction her marriage to a truculent-looking person of most forbidding if otherwise manly appearance, who had certainly saved her from death in ways not presently clear to him, but who could not be regarded as a suitable son-in-law solely on that account.
What could he do, what could he say, to make the position less intolerable?
Anstruther, quicker than Iris to appreciate Sir Arthur Deane's dilemma, gallantly helped him. He placed a loving hand on the girl's shoulder.
"Be advised by me, Sir Arthur, and you too, Iris," he said. "This is no hour for such explanations. Leave me to deal with Lord Ventnor. I am content to trust the ultimate verdict to you, Sir Arthur. You will learn in due course all that has happened. Go on board, Iris. Meet Lord Ventnor as you would meet any other friend. You will not marry him, I know. I can trust you." He said this with a smile that robbed the words of serious purport. "Believe me, you two can find plenty to occupy your minds today without troubling yourselves about Lord Ventnor."
"I am very much obliged to you," murmured the baronet, who, notwithstanding his worry, was far too experienced a man of the world not to acknowledge the good sense of this advice, no matter how ruffianly might be the guise of the strange person who gave it.
"That is settled, then," said Robert, laughing good-naturedly, for he well knew what a weird spectacle he must present to the bewildered old gentleman.
Even Sir Arthur Deane was fascinated by the ragged and hairy giant who carried himself so masterfully and helped everybody over the stile at the right moment He tried to develop the change in the conversation.
"By the way," he said, "how came you to be on the Sirdar? I have a list of all the passengers and crew, and your name does not appear therein."