might
just have mentioned her name when talking about Truefitt's troubles;
that's all."

"That's what I meant," said Robert Vyner, with an air of mild surprise.

"Well, it's not her," said the captain, shortly.

"Somebody I know, but not exactly," mused Robert. "Somebody I know,
but--Let me think."

He closed his eyes in an effort of memory, and kept them shut so long
that the captain, anxious to get him away before his visitor's arrival,
indulged in a loud and painful fit of coughing. Mr. Vyner's eyes
remained closed.

"Any more guesses?" inquired the captain, loudly.

Mr. Vyner, slept on. Gulls mewed overhead; a rattle of cranes sounded
from the quays, and a conversation--mostly in hoarse roars--took place
between the boatswain in the bows and an elderly man ashore, but he
remained undisturbed. Then he sprang up so suddenly that he nearly
knocked his chair over, and the captain, turning his head after him in
amaze, saw Joan Hartley standing at the edge of the quay.

Before he could interfere Mr. Vyner, holding her hand with anxious
solicitude, was helping her aboard. Poised for a moment on the side
of the ship, she sprang lightly to the deck, and the young man,
relinquishing her hand with some reluctance, followed her slowly toward
the captain.

Ten minutes later, by far the calmest of the three, he sat at tea in the
small but comfortable saloon. How he got there Captain Trimblett could
not exactly remember. Mr. Vyner had murmured something about a slight
headache, due in his opinion to the want of a cup of tea, and, even
while talking about going home to get it, had in an abstracted fashion
drifted down the companion-way.

"I feel better already," he remarked, as he passed his cup up to Miss
Hartley to be refilled. "It's wonderful what a cup of tea will do."

"It has its uses," said the captain, darkly.

He took another cup himself and sat silent and watchful, listening to
the conversation of his guests. A slight appearance of reserve on Miss
Hartley's part, assumed to remind Mr. Vyner of his bad behaviour on
the occasion of their last meeting, was dispelled almost immediately.
Modesty, tinged with respectful admiration, was in every glance and
every note of his voice. When she discovered that a man who had asked
for his tea without sugar had drunk without remark a cup containing
three lumps, she became thoughtful.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, in concern.

Modesty and Mr. Vyner--never boon c