We all make the mistake of searching for our drama, forgetting that it
arrives sooner or later, unsolicited.

Bewitched. Thomas should have been the happiest man alive, but the
devil had recruited him for his miserables. Her piquant face no longer
confronting and bewildering him, he saw this second net into which he
had permitted himself to be drawn. As if the first had not been
colossal enough! Where would it all end? Private secretary and two
hundred the month--forty pounds--this was a godsend. But to take her
orders day by day, to see her, to be near her. . . . Poverty-stricken
wretch that he was, he should have declined. Now he could not; being a
simple Englishman, he had given his word and meant to abide by it.
There was one glimmer of hope; her father. He was a practical merchant
and would not permit a man without a past (often worse than a man with
one) to enter his establishment.

Thomas was not in love with Kitty. (Indeed, this isn't a love story at
all.) Stewards, three days out, are not in the habit of falling in
love with their charges (Maundering and Drool notwithstanding). He was
afraid of her; she vaguely alarmed him; that was all.

For seven years he had dwelt in his "third floor back"; had breakfasted
and dined with two old maids, their scrawny niece, and a muscular young
stenographer who shouted militant suffrage and was not above throwing a
brickbat whenever the occasion arrived. There was a barmaid or two at
the pub where he lunched at noon; but chaff was the alpha and omega of
this acquaintance. Thus, Thomas knew little or nothing of the sex.