the constraint was not thereby lessened. Helen sat upright,
her chin resting upon the back of her left hand, her eyes, under their
drooping lids, looking out with a veiled fierceness upon the fair and
glittering prospect. Richard saw her face in profile. The black
mantilla draped her shoulders and bust with a certain austerity of
effect. It was evident that--by something--she had been stirred to the
extinction of her habitual vivacity and desire to shine. And Richard,
for all his coolness of head and rather cynical maturity of outlook,
had a restless suspicion of going forth--even as on that foggy morning
at Brockhurst--into a blank and sightless world, full of hazardous
possibility, where the safe way was difficult of discovery and where
masked dangers might lurk. Solicitous to dissipate his discomfort he
spoke a little at random.

"You must forgive me for being such an abominably bad host," he said
courteously. "I am not quite the thing this morning, somehow. I had a
little go of fever last night. My brain is like so much pulp."

Helen dropped her hand upon the table as though putting a term to an
importunate train of thought.

"I have always understood the villa to be remarkably free from
malaria," she remarked abstractedly.

"So it is. I quite believe that. The servants certainly keep well
enough. But so, unfortunately, is not the port."

Helen turned her head. A vertical line was observable between her
arched eyebrows.

"The port?" she repeated.

Richard swallowed his black coffee. Perhaps it might steady him and
clear his head. The numbness of his faculties and senses alike
exasperated him, filling him with a persuasion he would say precisely
those things wisdom would counsel to leave unsaid.

"Yes--you know I generally go down and sleep on board the yacht."

There was a momentary pause. Madame de Vallorbes' lips parted in a
soundless exclamation. Then she pushed back the modest folds of the
mantilla, leaving her neck free. The action of her hands was very
graceful as she did this, and she looked fixedly at Richard Calmady.

"I did not know that," she said slowly. Then added, as though reasoning
out her own thought:--"And Naples harbour is admittedly one of the most
pestilential holes on the face of the earth. Are you not tempting
providence in the matter of disease, Richard? Are you not rather
wantonly indiscreet?"

"On the contrary," he answered, and something of mockery touched his
expression, "I