y
conditions.

Some time later Kitty came in. She crossed immediately to the desk.
As Thomas looked up, she smiled at him. It was the first smile of the
kind he had witnessed, coming in his direction, since before that
blunder on the tennis-courts.

"I found Lord Monckton's monocle, Mr. Webb. Will you be so kind as to
give it to him?"

"Yes, Miss Killigrew." Absently he raised the monocle and squinted
through it. "Why, it's plain glass!" he exclaimed.

"So it is," replied Kitty, with a crooked smile. "And I dare say so
are most of the monocles we see. A silly affectation, don't you think
so?"

He was instantly up in arms. The monocle was a British institution,
and he would as soon have denied the divine right of kings as question
an Englishman's right to wear what he pleased in his eye.

"It was originally designed for a man whose left eye was weaker than
the right. Besides, we don't notice them over there."

"I have often wondered what the wearers do when their noses itch."

"Doubtless they scratch them."

Kitty's laughter bubbled. It subsided instantly. Her hand reached
out, then dropped. She had almost said: "Thomas, what have you done
with my sapphires?" Urgent as the impulse was, she crushed it back.
For deep in her heart she wanted to believe in Thomas; wanted to
believe that it was only a mad wager such as Englishmen propose, accept
and see to the end. There was not the slightest doubt in her mind that
Thomas and Lord Monckton were the two men who had stood on the curb
that foggy night in London. One had taken the necklace and the other
had wagered he would carry it six months in America before returning it
to its owner. The Nana Sahib's ruby she attributed to a real thief,
who had known Crawford in former days and, conscience-stricken, had
returned it.

Great Britain was an empire of wagerers she knew; they wagered for and
against every conceivable thing which had its dependence on chance.

That first night on board the Celtic, when Thomas came to her cabin in
the dark, she had recognized his voice. In the light the activity of
the eye had dulled the keenness of the ear; but in the dark the ear had
found the chord. For days she had been subconsciously waiting to hear
one or the other of those voices; and Thomas' had come with a shock.
The words "Aeneid" and "Enid" had so little variation in sound between
them that Kitty had found her second man in Lord Monckton. Sooner or
later