r with a different light in his eyes.

"A mere whim, you know," she hurried on. "Look at those Arabs over
there."

"But a pleasure trip of this kind must be awfully expensive, isn't it?"
he insisted.

She hesitated for an instant and then said boldly: "You see, Mr. Veath,
Hugh and I are very rich. It may not sound well for me to say it, but we
have much more money than we know how to spend. The cost of this voyage
is a mere trifle. Please do not think that I am boasting. It is the
miserable truth." His face was very pale when she dared to look up at it
again, and his gaze was far off at sea.

"And so you are very rich," he mused aloud. "I thought you were quite
poor, because missionaries are seldom overburdened with riches,
according to tradition, or the gospel, or something like that. This is a
pleasure trip!" The bitterness of his tone could not be hidden.

"I am sorry if you have had an idol shattered," she said.

"Something has been shattered," he said, smiling. "I don't know very
much about idols," he added. "How long do you expect to remain
in Manila?"

"But a very short time," she said simply.

"And I shall have to stay there for years, I suppose," he returned
slowly. His eyes came to hers for a second and then went back to the
stretch of water like a flash. That brief glance troubled her greatly.
Her heart trembled with pity for the man beside her, even though
speculation wrought the emotion.

In her stateroom that night she lay, dry-eyed and wakeful, her inward
cry being: "It is a crime to have wounded this innocent man. Why must he
be made to suffer?"

She could not tell Hugh of her discovery, for she knew that he would be
unreasonable, perhaps do or say something which would make the wound
more painful. During the days that followed Veath was as pleasant, as
genial, as gallant as before; none but Grace observed the faint change
in his manner. She was sure she could distinguish a change, yet at
times, when he was gayest, she thrilled with the hope that her belief
was the outgrowth of a conceit which she was beginning for the first
time to know she possessed. Then came the belief again and the belief
was stronger than the doubt. She could not be mistaken.

In the meantime an unexpected complication forced itself upon Hugh
Ridgeway. Perforce he had been thrown more or less constantly into the
society of that charming creature, Lady Huntingford. Not that the young
rakes in uniform were content to pa