. After he had
smoked four cigarettes a perceptible frown approached his brow. He
looked at the big doorway, then at his watch, then at the imperturbable
cabman. Her five minutes had grown to half an hour. His good nature was
going to the bad and he was about to follow in her footsteps when
suddenly he saw her emerging from the store.

"I had to mail a letter," she explained as they drove off. "Oh, Hugh,
I'm so nervous, I know that I will do something silly before we sail."

"A letter?"

"Yes; I mailed one letter to Uncle Harry before I left Chicago, you
know, but I forgot something important, so I had to write again to-day."

"What did you forget?"

"I forgot to tell him you were coming out on the same ship and would
look after me as if I were your own sister, Hugh."

Strange to say, neither of them smiled as their hands met in a warm,
confident clasp.

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST OBSTACLE

A drizzling rain began to fall and an overcast sky, cold and bleak,
dropped lower and lower until it covered the dripping park like a sombre
mantle. The glass in the hood of the hansom kept out the biting rain,
but the drear approach of a wet evening was not to be denied. For nearly
three hours Hugh and Grace had been driven through the park and up the
Riverside, killing time with a nervous energy that was beginning to
tell. The electric lights were coming on; pavements glistened with the
glare from the globes; tiny volcanoes leaped up by thousands as the
patting, swishing raindrops flounced to the sidewalks.

"Isn't it dismal?" murmured Grace, huddling closer to his side. "I
thought the weather man said it was to be nice? It's horrid!"

"I think it's lovely!" said he beamingly. "Just the sort of weather for
a mystery like this. It begins like a novel."

"I hope it ends as most of them do, commonplace as they are. Anyhow, it
will be fun to dine at Sherry's. If any one that we know should see us,
we can say--"

"No, dear; we'll not attempt to explain. In the face of what is to
follow, I don't believe an accounting is necessary. This is to be our
last dinner in good old America for many a day, dear. We'll have a good
one, just for history's sake. What kind of a bird will you have?"

"A lark, I think," she said with a bright smile.

"Oh, one doesn't eat the lark for dinner. He's a breakfast bird, you
know. One rises with him. Bedsides, we should try to keep our lark in
fine feather instead of subjecting it to the disc