Jack moved her shoulders impatiently, letting her clear gray eyes rest for the moment upon her companion's profile. He looked a soldier every inch of him and a brave man. Yet what could his confession mean?
"I haven't been a rich American girl always, Captain Madden," she returned. "And I don't know why you think I am one now. But a lack of money would never have made me give up my profession if I cared for it."
It was perfectly self-evident that Jack was feeling a sense of disappointment in her companion. Although they had only known one another for a week, and Captain Madden was so much older, intimacies develop more rapidly aboard ship than anywhere else in the world, except perhaps on a desert island. Jack suddenly realized that she had been giving more thought to her companion's history than there was any reason for doing.
She looked back over her shoulder. Numbers of persons with field glasses in their hands were coming on to the deck.
"Miss Drew and the girls will soon be joining us," she suggested, meaning for Captain Madden to understand that she no longer wished to discuss his personal affairs. "I must go and search for them if they don't come at once. I think I can already see the point of Cape Trafalgar. In a short time we must be entering the Straits of Gibraltar."
The next second Jack started to move away, but a glance from the man at her side held her. It was curious that she, who had never yielded to any one in her life except of her own will, should feel his influence.
"You are only a young girl and I am possibly twice your age," Captain Madden began, "yet our acquaintance aboard ship has been so pleasant that I do not wish to have you misunderstand me. There were other reasons for my leaving the British army, but you may believe this to be the chief one: I am not a good soldier in times of peace. When the Boer war was over, I wanted to be where there was still fighting to be done. My country was weary of war and so I joined the Russians in their war with Japan."
Jack shyly extended her hand. "That is all right, Captain Madden," she replied. "I know Ruth and Olive think it dreadful for me to be interested in fighting. Of course I hope there may never be any more great wars, but—" and here Jack laughed at herself, "to save my life I can't help being interested in battles and heroes who fight on against losing odds. I had a grandfather who was a general in the Confederate army."
And Jack, resting her chin on her hand with her elbow on the balustrade, gazed out to sea, apparently satisfied. Indeed, she was so vitally interested in the view before her that she hardly heard Captain Madden add:
"If your friend, Frank Kent, should ever offer you any other reason for my resignation—" But at this instant Ruth Drew and Olive appeared between them, and Ruth slipped her arm through Jack's. At once Captain Madden stepped aside, surrendering his place to Olive.