sat sombre, not lifting his eyes.
"Our host permits me. . . . Then I give you 'Miss Josselin!'"
Acclamations drowned his voice here, and the men sprang up, waving their
glasses. Sir Oliver stood with the rest.

"Miss Josselin! Miss Josselin!" they shouted, and drank what their
unsteady hands left unspilt. Langton waited, his full glass half
upraised.

"Miss Josselin," he repeated very deliberately on the tail of the
uproar, "who honours this occasion as Sir Oliver's ward."

For about five seconds an awkward silence held the company.
Their fuddled memories retained scraps of gossip concerning Ruth, her
history and destiny--gossip scandalous in the main. One or two glanced
at the Collector, who had resumed his seat--and his scowl.

"The more reason she should drink his health." Again Mr. Silk was
fugleman.

His voice braved it off on the silence. Ruth was raising her glass.
Her eyes sought Miss Quiney's; but Miss Quiney's, lifted heavenward, had
encountered the ceiling upon which Mr. Manley had recently depicted the
hymeneals of Venus and Vulcan, not omitting Mars; and the treatment--a
riot of the nude--had for the moment put the redoubtable little lady out
of action.

Ruth leaned forward in her seat, lifting her glass high. It brimmed,
but she spilled no drop.

"To Sir Oliver!"

Chapter VI.

CAPTAIN HARRY AND MR. HANMER.

"Guests, has he?--Out of my road, you rascal! Guests? I'll warrant
there's none so welcome--"

A good cheery voice--a voice the curtain could not muffle--rang it down
the corridor as on the note of a cornet.

The wine was at Ruth's lip, scarcely wetting it. She lowered the glass
steadily and turned half-about in her chair at the moment when, as
before a whirlwind, the curtain flew wide and a stranger burst in on the
run with Manasseh at his heels.

"Oliver!" The stranger drew himself up in the doorway--a well-knit
figure of a man, clear of eye, bronzed of hue, clad in blue sea-cloth
faced with scarlet, and wearing a short sword at the hip. "Where's my
Oliver?" he shouted. "You'll forgive my voice, gentlemen. I'm Harry
Vyell, at your service, fresh from shipboard, and not hoarse with
anthems like old what-d'ye-call-him." Running his gaze along the table,
he sighted the Collector and broke into a view-halloo.

"Oliver! Brother Noll!" Captain Harry made a second run of it, caught
his foot on the prostrate toper whom Langton had dragged out of Miss
Quiney's way,