When Marie came out of her berth I was struck afresh by her improved looks. I turned to Selby and said:
'This lady sailed for her health. Such distresses, such trials of mind and body as she has suffered, should pinch the face as fire wastes wax, and she looks so much better that her father will scarcely know her!'
'I told Mr. Moore,' she said, 'that I don't know how I may look, but that I am alive and with him again,' said she, stealing her hand into mine, 'is wholly owing to you.' Then raising her voice, heated into a higher clearness by emotion, she exclaimed, 'In the presence and hearing of my betrothed, I thank you with my heart of hearts for all your goodness to me, for your hundred acts of noble unselfishness, for the splendid courage and faith which supported us both through the awful time that is now ended.'
He bowed to her in silence.
'Mr. Selby,' said I, grasping him by the hand, then putting my other upon his, and so holding him, 'Miss Otway has spoken her gratitude; my own I have already attempted to express. The profession of the sea has produced some splendid characters; but it seems to me that you are one of the finest compliments that nature ever paid to your calling.'
'I thank you for your kind words, sir,' he said, with colour and embarrassment, 'and for yours, Miss Otway. I felt very sorry for you when I found you alone on that dismasted hulk, and I swore to myself I would so act that, come what might, if you were spared, you should be able to say of me, He was a man.'
I could have hugged him!
We seated ourselves and all our talk ran upon the hull, and upon my own adventures. I particularly noticed Selby's respectful manner to Marie. That was as satisfying to every instinct within me as though I had shared their imprisonment. It was not a thing he just put on; it sat with the unconscious ease of an old and fixed habit. I heard it in his voice, I marked it in his manner of attention when she spoke; in twenty subtle ways it was expressed as something abiding; it was, in short, the man's, the seaman's, and the gentleman's recognition of her claims as a woman and of her station; I knew it had been with him from the beginning, and I loved him from that moment with a heart unshadowed by the faintest anxiety or misgiving.
I asked him how they had managed for food.
'The hold was full of good things, sir,' he answered. 'We did not stint ourselves, Miss Otway,' said he, smiling.