"I believe they've quarrelled," she said to herself and then more loudly, "Mr. Smith."

The fat little man who was pounding the deck for the good of his health, paused and bowed.

"I shall be much obliged if you will allow me to join you in your constitutional," said Miss Luck, and as she took his arm and paced the deck with him she confided to him with characteristic candour that she suffered from dyspepsia.

"Too much iced water," said Mr. Smith sympathetically. And having found a topic interesting to both of them they fell to discussing the comparative merits of a British and an American dietary.

64

'Keep this side of the deck," said Miss Luck, "there's a perfect blizzard the other side of the smoke-stack."

In the warm shelter to be found in the neighbourhood of the funnel Miss Luck lingered, in the more exposed portions of the deck she raced Mr. Smith along till he was almost out of breath.

"Nice comfortable place your friend 'Steely-Eyes' has chosen," she said to the companion who was trotting to keep up with one of her fastest spurts.

But Mr. Smith did not know whom she meant.

"Mr. Fletcher," she explained, "he has been sitting there all the afternoon with Miss Hamilton."

But Mr. Smith denied all acquaintance with Mr. Fletcher.

"But I've seen you speaking to him twice," said Miss Luck, "twice since we came on board; once when you spoke to him on deck and held out your hand and he turned his back on you, and once after that late one night when you were talking together like old friends in the smoke-room -I looked in as I walked by the door." "Your bright eyes see everything, Miss Luck," protested Mr. Smith.

"There are no flies on Lolie," said Miss Luck gracefully acknowledging the compliment, but refusing to be put off by it she added impatiently, "Who is Mr. Fletcher anyway?"

"I don't know," said Mr. Smith, and added, "I am afraid you are catching cold."

But it was incredulity, not catarrh, which caused Miss Luck to sniff, and she made no further rejoinder.

The fog had thickened, the steam foghorn was beginning to boom over their heads with the groan of a distracted mammoth, but Miss Luck holding Mr. Smith's

arm continued to tramp the deck. She was rewarded in time for her patience, if Mr. Smith had the right to judge from the tightening grip of her fingers and the thrill of excitement in her tone as she whispered, "Look as we go by this time, he is holding her hand."

Mr. Smith was a bashful man and a discreet one, to his honour be it said he did not look. He tried on the contrary to restrain his companion from going near them where they sat.

"They will not mind us," said Miss Luck in a tone of conviction. And she was right to the extent that it was not her presence which caused Mr. Fletcher to straighten himself in his chair, while a slight cloud of impatience crossed his face. A tall elderly man wrapped in a thick ulster with the collar turned up round his throat had come and stood behind them and said in a tentative voice as if not quite sure of her identity, "Edith," and then in an imperious impatient tone as she turned her head, "Edith, I have been looking for you everywhere."

"Yes, father," said Miss Hamilton, quietly. She had naturally a quiet lowpitched voice; when she spoke to her father it seemed almost suppressed.

She said a few words to him as Mr. Fletcher rose and stood by with his selfpossessed angular air and a slight look of expectancy.

"My goodness," said Miss Luck to her friend Miss van Hooten as they settled into their places at dinner half an hour later, "I saw something this afternoon. The Solitary Girl' has introduced 'Steely-Eyes' to her papa. Look, he's coming in to be her chaperon at dinner. Time he did."

And they both stared eagerly at the tall grey-headed man who was taking his seat between Mr. Fletcher and Miss Hamilton.

"Family freezes to Fletcher," said Miss van Hooten laconically as the two men lit cigars together and paced the deck side by side.

It was raw and wet outside that evening, and Miss Hamilton remained below. Next morning the acquaintance between her father and Mr. Fletcher seemed almost a friendship they talked together so long in the smoking saloon; at least Mr. Fletcher talked and the elder man listened, and all day no one saw Miss Hamilton appear except at meals; no one, that is, but Mr. Smith, who being as has been said a discreet young man, did not mention it. As a matter of fact he recognised her on deck

late in the evening, and would not have noticed her at all had not his attention been so forcibly drawn to her the evening before by Miss Luck. When he saw her and saw that she was talking earnestly to Mr. Fletcher in the shelter of the boat behind which he had himself purposed to take refuge from the driving mist and smoke his pipe, he retreated, feeling half inclined to apologise for his interruption.

"What a curious sort of chap he is," said Mr. Smith to himself, as he sat in the smoking saloon and puffed at his pipe and blinked at the electric light, "fancy his being in love. I wonder if she really likes him.'

Mr. Smith would have had no doubt on that score if he had remained unobserved and listened to her in the place where he came upon them behind the boat, as she stood with her face half buried in Mr. Fletcher's ulster.

"Oh," she was saying again and again, "don't, don't. I am not worthy of you, you do not know me: you do not know what I am."

And Mr. Fletcher smiled and put a sheltering arm round her, and said

"Hush.

But she went on. "It was wrong, I know it was wrong to let you know me, to let you be with me, but I liked you" ("loved" put in Mr. Fletcher) "loved you from the first and never thought you would ever come to love me. And now I feel I have been so horrible to let you."

"Why, darling, why? What have you done that I should not?"

66

"Nothing," said the girl, sobbing in his arms, nothing, it was just that, I did nothing."

"I don't quite understand," he whispered, bending over her, "perhaps I ought not to, perhaps I need not, perhaps though I had better, you shall tell me tell me now."

"I will," she said, and then trembling and clutching at his sleeve, "but promise it will make no difference to your love."

And Mr. Fletcher promised; he was not an effusive sort of man, perhaps he was not capable of exhibiting deep feeling, even if he felt it; and perhaps even he could not help feeling that a little more enthusiasm, a little more softness and warmth in his tone, would have consoled her and comforted her, and made her almost happy. Anyhow, he bent down and kissed her two or three times with more gentleness than he had hitherto shown.

"Not now," she whispered, "I cannot tell you now. See, they are turning everyone out of the deck saloons, we ought to go below, I cannot stay on deck so late."

"When will you tell me?" he asked.

"To-morrow," and she left him and flitted below, and along the long corridor and into her "state room," where she had to restrain her sobs, lest they should be noticed by the old French lady who shared it with her. There was little real solitude for the "Solitary Girl" on board the Arcadia, least of all in her cabin, for the old French lady suffered from insomnia, and when she did sleep talked of a deceased husband, or to him, with many ejaculations of Mon Dieu! and intermittent snores.

It was late the following morning, when Mr. Fletcher saw Miss Hamilton come on deck, and brought his chair and sat beside her.

"What should we have done without my spare chair?" he said, "we should never have been uninterrupted for five minutes together."

Perhaps it would have been better so," she answered, but her eyes belied her words.

"Why say so?" he asked. "Listen, Edith" (it was the first time he had used her Christian name, and it came out rather loudly with a rush), "you said you had something to tell me, something which I ought to know. I swear to you, it shall make no difference, but I think there ought to be no secrets between us. I suppose," he added, looking at her, as if watching the effect of his words, "it is something some relation of yours has done, some ancestor, which you fancy would stop me from marrying you."

"I did not know I had said so much," she said, "how quick-witted you are, it makes it so much easier."

He nodded, and touched her hand encouragingly.

"You have heard of the London and Wessex Investment Trust Company," she

went on.

"I saw something in the papers about their being reported to be in difficulties," he replied, "something about the defalcations of the secretary; he must have been arrested the day we sailed, I read it in a telegram in an Irish paper some one brought on board at Queenstown."

"Poor man," she said, "I did not know that."

"Do you know him?" he asked, "has he anything to do with you?"

"Nothing. He is innocent."

"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I don't quite see what he has to do with us then. I don't quite understand."

She bent towards him over the arm of her chair, speaking almost in a whisper, "If it were only dark-if I had only told you yesterday with your arms round me,' she said. But he made no reply, and she went on, My father is the chairman of the company." She paused, and as if he thought himself expected to say something, he put in in his dry steady tone, "I had a notion the name was Renshaw or some such name."

"Henshawe," she said, correcting him, "we called ourselves Hamilton because the initial was on all our boxes. My father is Mr. Henshawe, you have heard his name in the city, he was reported to have got into difficulties, I don't know how -was he not?"

Mr. Fletcher shrugged his shoulders. "Is that any reason why I should not marry you?" he asked.

"Mr. Fletcher," she said.
"Jack," he interpolated.

"Jack," she said, "will you ever let me call you Jack, when you know all, I wonder? I wonder, dwelling upon it as I have done, what people would think of it and me; Jack, it is true all the same my father is the man."

Mr. Fletcher nodded. "He has robbed the company," he said, "I guessed that soon after you began; is that all?"

"All," she said, "all? Is not that enough? Do you not turn from me, loathe me, spurn me? No, it is not all, though, far from it: we are escaping from justice, from penal servitude, but we are going, and I know it, to live in luxury for a time at least in some new home."

"Are they big volumes with clasps and strong bindings ledgers, accountbooks?"

"Yes," he said, "that kind of thing."

"There is father," she said glancing aft to where Mr. Henshawe was settling into a seat, "fancy if he knew what we were talking about, fancy if he knew I had spoken about him as I have to you. He would kill me if he thought I ever dreamed of doing such a thing."

"You are very much afraid of him?” She shuddered. "I love my father, I suppose I love him, I cannot respect, perhaps I fear him," she said vaguely. "I loved my mother, but she is dead. Do men always grow tired of their wives when they have been married twenty years and longer and the wife has bad health, and is afraid of them. Shall you hate me in twenty years? Perhaps you do now, or you will if I get to fear you."

"I love you," he said again, just stroking her hand for an instant, looking first to see if anyone was watching them, "can I say more here on deck?"

His tone was a trifle colder than his words, but what he had said seemed to satisfy her, and he was under the disadvantage of possessing an unsympathetic voice.

"Then you can still love me," she said in a low whisper.

He nodded, he was evidently a man who faced problems boldly, and shrank from no revelations.

"What about those books you spoke of?" he said leading her back to the subject, "when have you seen them?"

"At our house once or twice," she said, "he let me know things sometimes. I had to help him when he fetched them once or twice."

'Oh, he fetched them, did he?" said Mr. Fletcher, "I wonder how he got hold of them?"

"He had duplicates of every key in the office of the company," she said, "and besides the secretary was ill and away."

'Then I suppose he altered the books," said Mr. Fletcher, "he must be rather clever."

"He could imitate writing so as to deceive the bankers," said Miss Henshawe, "that was how he got the securities and things away from them."

"Do you think they suspected him before he left?"

"I believe he thought some of the directors thought something was very

wrong, and were going into matters; in fact, he knew they were going to employ a detective."

"Eh?" said Mr. Fletcher, "you heard they did that?"

"Father found it out somehow, but of course they may not have begun at once and we got a good start," she said. "You see I talk of it as we, I half feel I am a thief and I know that my father is."

She drew her hand across her forehead as if her head ached.

"Does no one know anything of this but you?"

"Father thought Rogers, our old butler, knew of things going on. He saw the books once and came into the room when father was talking to me, but father sent him out to his nephew in Australia."

"He would be a dangerous witness, of course," said Mr. Fletcher meditatively. "and the secretary," he continued after a pause, "did he help your father?"

"He knew nothing, he was ill when father did it," she said, "he told me so. He thought I suspected something and to get me more in his power by frightening me he showed me everything and gave me some of them to keep for him.'

"What sort of things?"

"Signatures he had forged, or practised, the seal of the company which he had copied."

"Phew!" whistled Mr. Fletcher.

"It's terrible for you to hear it," she said, "think what it must be to tell," and encouraged by his hand she went on, "I have some of his keys, safe keys I believe, mixed up with mine, and bonds and bank notes, quite a bundle of them; I am to conceal them going ashore, and if anything is found it will be my fault, and my having them will be enough to convict me as well as father."

"They would not be so harsh as to do that," said Mr. Fletcher, "if they knew he made you—Brute," he added eying his future father-in-law, Mr. Henshawe, sauntering up and down the deck smoking a cigarette.

"You must not say that," she said, "he is very kind to me sometimes, but I daresay he will get on very well without me if I leave him and-and

"Marry me and settle out West," said Mr. Fletcher. "That would be all right, we will be married in New York if he will let us shall I tell him now?"

"Perhaps we had better wait till after we land," she said, "but do you really,

really mean it? Will it really make no difference?"

And for the fourth time that morning he assured her of his love, and that nothing her father had ever led her into doing would make the slightest difference to it.

"I have plenty in my past too," he said, "that I must tell you of some day."

"Can't you tell me now?" she said. The idea of his past also not being spotless seemed to create a bond between them, and reassure her.

He laughed. "Perhaps it would make me as doubtful of you if I told you as you seem to be of me. But about these papers, where are they?"

"I have my share in a box," she said, "with all my clothes and things, some are in the lining of my trunk and under a false bottom father had fitted to it, some I shall wear under my clothes, but the Custom House officials are fearfully strict are they not?

"Dreadful," he said, "but I think I have a plan. I have crossed before many times and I know one of the Custom House officials well; he would do a good deal for me, can't I take your box through as mine?"

"But father-" she said.

By

"Tell your father you said they were dress stuffs you wanted to smuggle and I said I would do the trick for you. Jove, they are getting ready to signal for a pilot, they must have sighted a sail," and Mr. Fletcher was off to help to get up a sweepstake or a pool to be won by the lucky drawer of the pilot's number. The only social intercourse Mr. Fletcher had had with any of his fellow passengers besides Miss Henshawe had been over the daily "pool" on the ship's run. Perhaps he did not mind that, as it brought him chiefly in contact with the men in the smoking saloon. He had gained their respect too by winning on more than one occasion, which might be luck and might be science. They were "auction-pools," a purely American institution, and Mr. Fletcher had shown wonderful judgment in purchasing the numbers which others had drawn. The sweep" over the pilot's number was an ordinary English lottery and Miss Hamilton won with a ticket Mr. Fletcher had bought for her, he brought her the money after the pilot had come on board.

I spoke to father," she said, "about your offer to take my box ashore, he says it will not do."

"I'll arrange for everything as soon as I can, dearest," he said hurriedly, "but what does he mean, what's his game?"

"He says the directors before we left were putting everything in the hands of a detective, as I told you; not a police detective, a private man, Finacane, do you know him?"

"I know him-yes I do," said Mr. Fletcher frowning, "I know him by name, he will do no good."

"Why not? he is one of the cleverest men in London father says. He may have found out where we have gone and telegraphed."

"Hang Finacane," said Mr. Fletcher again, "he's no use, don't be frightened about him."

"I am very frightened," she said. "Father wanted me to find out a very small hotel to go to."

"You had better go to a big one, you are more likely to escape notice," said Mr. Fletcher, and next minute he was singing the praises of the Brevoort House to her father, who looked more grim and saturnine than ever; and restlessly chewed the end of his cigar. He was glad however in his protestations of gratitude next day for Mr. Fletcher's assistance in passing the customs.

"I see you know the ropes," he said, "come and see us in a day or two and dine with us if you have nothing better to do," which Mr. Fletcher said he would do; he was going to a humbler hotel himself not far off.

interest her; a negro or a Chinaman shuffling past reminded her that she was in a new world, and that in that world was to be her home. And he seemed to have so much to say though he had only left her a few hours before, and he took as much interest in every little thing and in pointing it out to her as any lover could; quite minute details of the new life. A small boy munching a rosy slice of water-melon, a little girl chewing a "gum," and the distant tinkle of a tramway bell or the rumble of a train in the neighbouring "elevated" railway all in the baking air of a hot day in New York. And it was hot; it would have been cooler in the hotel, but he would not hear of her returning there and disturbing her father on the first day after his arrival, and it was six o'clock when he parted from her on the steps of the big white hotel.

"How they stare at an English_girl," she thought as she entered the lift and hurried along the corridor to her own room, wondering also where her father was and where he meant to dine.

Then she entered her room and her heart stood still. A few dresses and articles of wearing apparel lay on the bed in confusion, everything else was gone, her dressing bag, her trunks, everything. She needed no one to tell her what had happened.

"Your pa said you were to come and see him if you could, he said so." A very minute boy employed on some duty or other in the big hotel stood at her elbow, piped out his message and fled before she could question him, but one of the hotel officials in the office downstairs had more to tell her. The New York lawyer who was intrusted with the necessary steps for obtaining her father's extradition to England had left word that such of her things as on further search proved to have no connection with the case would be returned at an early date.

To his office she thought it best to go at once, half dazed as she was, to find out if he could empower her in any way to see her father, and she drove there in a fly-it emptied her purse to pay for it.

And she went alone. If she had only had Jack to be with her and strengthen her with his presence, her despair would have been less; but he had never mentioned where he was staying and if she had waited till he came to meet her in the morning time would have been lost. And she had always contemplated the possi