She
assured herself that after all King understood her and she him, and
that if they never rose to certain heights, they never sank below a
high level of mutual esteem, and that perhaps was the best in the end.

King had placed his yacht at the disposal of Madame Alvarez, and she
had sailed to Colon, where she could change to the steamers for Lisbon,
while he accompanied the Langhams and the wedding party to New York.

Clay recognized that the time had now arrived in his life when he could
graduate from the position of manager-director and become the
engineering expert, and that his services in Olancho were no longer
needed.

With Rojas in power Mr. Langham had nothing further to fear from the
Government, and with Kirkland in charge and young Langham returning
after a few months' absence to resume his work, he felt himself free to
enjoy his holiday.

They had taken the first steamer out, and the combined efforts of all
had been necessary to prevail upon MacWilliams to accompany them; and
even now the fact that he was to act as Clay's best man and, as Langham
assured him cheerfully, was to wear a frock coat and see his name in
all the papers, brought on such sudden panics of fear that the
fast-fading coast line filled his soul with regret, and a wilful desire
to jump overboard and swim back.

Clay and Hope stopped at the door of the chief engineer's cabin and
said they had come to pay him a visit. The chief had but just come
from the depths where the contamination of the earth was most evident
in the condition of his stokers; but his chin was now cleanly shaven,
and his pipe was drawing as well as his engine fires, and he had
wrapped himself in an old P. & O. white duck jacket to show what he had
been before he sank to the level of a coasting steamer. They admired
the clerk-like neatness of the report he had just finished, and in
return he promised them the fastest run on record, and showed them the
portrait of his wife, and of their tiny cottage on the Isle of Wight,
and his jade idols from Corea, and carved cocoanut gourds from Brazil,
and a picture from the "Graphic" of Lord Salisbury, tacked to the
partition and looking delightedly down between two highly colored
lithographs of Miss Ellen Terry and the Princess May.

Then they called upon the captain, and Clay asked him why captains
always hung so much lace about their beds when they invariably slept on
a red velvet sofa with their boots on, and the captain