In his heart Staniford had often thought that he could have done very much less than jump overboard after Hicks, and could very properly have left him to the ordinary life-saving apparatus of the ship. But if he had been putting the matter to some lady in society who was aggressively praising him for his action, he would have said just what Lydia had said for him,—that he could not have done anything less. He might have said it, however, in such a way that the lady would have pursued his retreat from her praises with still fonder applause; whereas this girl seemed to think there was nothing else to be said. He began to stand in awe of her heroic simplicity. If she drew every-day breath in that lofty air, what could she really think of him, who preferred on principle the atmosphere of the valley? “Do you know, Miss Blood,” he said gravely, “that you pay me a very high compliment?”
“How?” she asked.
“You rate my maximum as my mean temperature.” He felt that she listened inquiringly. “I don't think I'm habitually up to a thing of that kind,” he explained.
“Oh, no,” she assented, quietly; “but when he struck at you so, you had to do everything.”
“Ah, you have the pitiless Puritan conscience that takes the life out of us all!” cried Staniford, with sudden bitterness. Lydia seemed startled, shocked, and her hand trembled on his arm, as if she had a mind to take it away. “I was a long time laboring up to that point. I suppose you are always there!”
“I don't understand,” she said, turning her head round with the slow motion of her beauty, and looking him full in the face.
“I can't explain now. I will, by and by,—when we get to Venice,” he added, with quick lightness.
“You put off everything till we get to Venice,” she said, doubtfully.
“I beg your pardon. It was you who did it the last time.”
“Was it?” She laughed. “So it was! I was thinking it was you.”