"You did not guess this. He told you, I presume," bitterly.
"He—if you mean Captain Lancaster—told me nothing. I was telling him something. Why should you be vexed at him because I went and stood there and talked to him?" indignantly.
"I was not," rather feebly.
"Do you really deny it?" she asked him, incredulously.
"Well, since you put it so seriously, yes, I was vexed about it; but I don't understand how you could know it," he answered, flushing a dark red.
"I will tell you how I know," she said, coloring crimson also. "I heard all that you and Captain Lancaster said about me that first night we came aboard."
"Oh, by Jove! you didn't, though?" he exclaimed, radiant, and trying to meet the glance of the beautiful eyes.
But with her shy avowal she had let the white lids drop bashfully over them.
De Vere was not one bit disconcerted by what she had told him. He knew that all she had heard that night had been to his advantage.
"And so all this while you knew that I thought—" he began, boldly.