"I can manage a sail; I know the argot, I could tell the shrouds from the bulwarks, and I've rowed a boat in a choppy sea." "It is not an accomplishment usual to your sex." "It was ordinary enough where I spent the early part of my life," was the idle reply; and she settled herself more comfortably in her chair.
"Yes?
May I ask where that was ?" and as I said this, it occurred to me that she was, perhaps, leading me on, instead of my leading her; to betray me as to anything I knew about her.
"In the South Seas," she replied.

"My father was a British consul in the Islands." "You have not come from the Islands now, I suppose ?" "No," she said a little more softly; "it is years since I was in Samoa.
...

My father is buried there." "You must have found it a romantic life in those half-barbaric places ?" She shifted in her chair.

"Romantic!" Her tone conveyed a very slight uneasiness and vagueness.

"I am afraid you must ask some one else about that sort of thing.