Driven to Bay, Volume II by Florence Marryat

No one on board the _Pandora_ was a greater favourite than Alice Leyton. She was pretty and lively and clever, and she was reported to be rich. On first starting, she had confided the secret of her engagement to Vernon Blythe to several of the lady passengers, and, as is usual in such cases, the news had leaked out, until it was the property of the whole vessel. When she found that it was so, Alice became shy of its being alluded to, and on more than one occasion had denied it point blank, so that people did not really know what to believe about it. And the girl had not been in such good spirits lately. She laughed and talked enough when on deck or in the saloon, and she ‘chaffed' Jack Blythe so unmercifully whenever they met, that he had become rather weary of her presence. But when she found herself alone or unobserved, Alice's face told a very different tale. Even the baby, little Winnie, who shared her cabin, had more than once been wakened from sleep by her sister's sobbing, and wondered in her childish way if ‘Ally's pain was very bad,' to make her ‘cry so hard? ' Indeed Alice Leyton's conduct at this period resembled nothing so much as an April day, with its alternate sun and showers. Her tears might flow fast at night, but she would appear on deck next morning, radiant with smiles, and her mother was the only person who noticed that she looked a little care-worn, and that the lines under her blue eyes were a shade darker than was natural. Mrs Leyton noticed another thing -- that her daughter no longer made the strenuous efforts she used to do to secure a _tête-à-tête_ with her lover, Jack Blythe, but seemed quite contented with the somewhat formal greetings they were obliged to exchange in public, whilst she spent hour after hour in the company of Captain Lovell.

But she did not mention the subject to Alice. She preferred the girl should settle her love affairs in her own way. The truth is, Mrs Leyton had never felt quite easy as to what her husband would say when she told him she had allowed their eldest daughter to consider herself engaged to be married before consulting him. She was a great invalid herself. She had come to England before Winnie's birth to secure better medical advice than she was able to get in New Zealand, and it had not been considered safe for her to return home until now. Alice had been, therefore, from the age of fourteen to eighteen, under her mother's exclusive care, and Mrs Leyton often wished she had not allowed her to drift into this quasi-engagement with Vernon Blythe. Her husband was a wealthy man, the owner of a large sheep-run on the Hurannie, and was likely to expect his daughters to contract marriages in accordance with the settlements he was able to make upon them. Mrs Leyton felt sure that of the two suitors for Alice's hand, her husband would prefer Captain Lovell, who had retired from the service, and was going out to settle in New Zealand, and so she determined to let matters take their course. She liked and admired Vernon Blythe, but he had no money beyond his pay, and nothing but his good looks and gentlemanly manners to recommend him for a husband. Alice, on the other hand, was in a very unhappy frame of mind. She wished her mother would broach the subject, and ask for her confidence, or that Jack would grow jealous of her flirtation with Lovell, and so bring about an explanation, but neither of them made any sign. She felt guiltily happy in the presence of the fascinating captain, and basely false and fickle with regard to Jack; and if he held her to her engagement, she felt that she must marry him, and so she was miserable all round. For she knew now that she had never really loved Vernon Blythe. It was a folly -- an infatuation.