that was to be known about life, and secure in a handsome
fortune--as he gazed, Denry reflected, joyously, victoriously:

"I've got the dibs, of course. But she's got 'em too--perhaps more.
Therefore she must like me for myself alone. This brilliant creature has
been everywhere and seen everything, and she comes back to the Five
Towns and comes back to _me_."

It was his proudest moment. And in it he saw his future far more
glorious than he had dreamt.

"When shall you be out of mourning?" he inquired.

"In two months," said she.

This was not a proposal and acceptance, but it was very nearly one. They
were silent, and happy.

Then she said:

"Do you ever have business at Southport?"

And he said, in a unique manner:

"I shall have."

Another silence. This time he felt he _would_ marry her.

V

The White Star liner, _Titubic_, stuck out of the water like a row
of houses against the landing-stage. There was a large crowd on her
promenade-deck, and a still larger crowd on the landing-stage. Above the
promenade-deck officers paced on the navigating deck, and above that was
the airy bridge, and above that the funnels, smoking, and somewhere
still higher a flag or two fluttering in the icy breeze. And behind the
crowd on the landing-stage stretched a row of four-wheeled cabs and
rickety horses. The landing-stage swayed ever so slightly on the tide.
Only the ship was apparently solid, apparently cemented in foundations
of concrete.

On the starboard side of the promenade-deck, among a hundred other small
groups, was a group consisting of Mr and Mrs Cotterill and Ruth and
Denry. Nellie stood a few feet apart, Mrs Cotterill was crying. People
naturally thought she was crying because of the adieux; but she was not.
She wept because Denry and Ruth, by sheer force of will, had compelled
them to come out of the steerage and occupy beautiful and commodious
berths in the second cabin, where the manner of the stewards was quite
different. She wept because they had been caught in the steerage. She
wept because she was ashamed, and because people were too kind. She was
at once delighted and desolated. She wanted to outpour psalms of
gratitude, and also she wanted to curse.

Mr Cotterill said stiffly that he should repay--and that soon.

An immense bell sounded impatiently.

"We'd better be shunting," said Denry. "That's the second."

In exciting crises he sometimes employed such peculiar language as this.
And h