No answer. Maseden felt that he had cornered her.
"There must have been some such ground for an extraordinary action," he went on. "To the best of my knowledge she had never seen me. I question if she even knew my name. I--"
A door opened, and a stream of light fell on the deck some feet away. Sturgess's voice reached them clearly.
"Guess she's tucked up cozy in a deck chair," he was saying. "It's no time to retire to roost yet, anyhow."
"Please go now," whispered Nina tremulously. "You mustn't be seen talking to me. I--I'll discuss things with Madge, and if possible, come here about the same hour to-morrow, or next day. I--I'll do my best."
Without another word, Maseden swung himself over the rail. When below the level of the deck he clung to the ladder and listened, not meaning to act ungenerously, but because of the other man's rapid approach.
"Ah, there you are, Miss Nina!" cried Sturgess. "Sister Madge is bored stiff by my company, but was polite enough to pretend that she was anxious about you."
"I've been star-gazing," said the girl, hastening towards him.
"So've I," grinned Sturgess. "You two girls have the finest eyes I've ever--"
His voice trailed away into silence. Maseden dropped to the deck.
"Hang it all!" he muttered, strangely disconsolate. "When Fate took me by the scruff of the neck and married me to one of two sisters, neither of whom I had ever seen, she might have been kind enough, the jade, to tie me to the right one!"
Yet, even to his thinking, Madge and Nina were like as a couple of pins! Being an eminently sensible sort of fellow, he realized in the next breath that Madge might be quite as nice a girl as Nina.
Then the thought struck him that she was purposely making things easier for him by cultivating a friendship with Sturgess. In any case, Sturgess was obviously destined to act as a pawn in the game. Even he, Maseden, had not scrupled to use that gentleman at sight when anxious to board the _Southern Cross_ without attracting the attention of the news-mongering boatmen of Cartagena.
That night he lay awake for hours. For one thing, the ship was running into bad weather again, and complained nosily of the buffeting her stout frame was receiving. For another, his own course was beset with difficulties. He failed completely to understand the attitude of sister Nina.