There was a brightness in her eye, and a courage about her mouth, which had made him think that, in spite of her appearance, she would be worth his attention--just for the voyage.

When he had been speaking to herself they had been on the deck together, and it had been dusk and he had not been able to look her in the face; but while Shand had been speaking to him he had observed that she was very comely.

And this was the more remarkable because it seemed to him to be so evident that she made the worst rather than the best of herself.

She was quite a young woman;--probably, he thought, not more than three or four and twenty; and she was there, with many young men round her, and yet she made no effort to attract attention.

When his eye had fallen upon her she had generally been quite alone, doing some piece of coarse and ordinary work.
'I have had another conversation with her,' said Shand to him that night.
'Have you unravelled the mystery ?' 'Not quite; but I have got the fact that there is a mystery.