ach; "she'll be so awfully liable to meet some
foreigner over there and--and just marry him." He threw up his cane as
he spoke, intending to rap on the boarding by which they were that
instant passing.

Jack thrust his own cane out quickly and barred the other with an
excellent fencing _fente_.

"No rapping on wood!" he cried sharply; "not after that speech!--you
know!"

Carter turned two astonished eyes friend-ward.

"What do you mean?" he asked; "do you mean to say that you'd stand her
marrying any one over there for one minute?"

"Stand it!" said Jack, "would we _stand_ it, did you say? My dear
fellow, how plainly you betray the fact that you are in love with
Rosina. We,--myself and the family,--on the contrary, live with her. The
difference in the two propositions is too tremendous to be quickly
grasped by you even, but it is just about the same distance as that
between theory and practice."

"Nonsense!" said Carter, with an air of deep annoyance.

"I'll tell you how I personally regard Rosina," Jack went on, paying no
attention to the other's exclamation; "I look upon her as very likely to
marry abroad, because I don't know of but one man at home clever enough
to be able to marry her."

He laid his hand upon Carter's shoulder as he spoke, and Carter, who
didn't at all understand what he meant, thought that he understood, and
was correspondingly happy.

They boarded the ferry then, and went from Hoboken straight back to
civilization.

* * * * *

The "Kronprinz" meanwhile was slowly wending her way down the river,
past the skyscrapers, and out towards the open sea.

Rosina, already established in her chair, with a mother-of-pearl
lorgnette upon her lap and a pair of field-glasses swinging from the
card-holder, felt more placidly happy than she had in years. If those
left behind who supposed that she was going abroad to get a second
husband could but have gazed into her heart, they would have
comprehended the utter and complete falsity of their views.

Her year and a half of widowhood had been one long-continued period of
quiet ecstasy.

Standing alone in her own room the morning after the funeral, she had
made a vow to never marry again.

"Enough is as good as a feast," she had said, surveying her crape-draped
self with a deep sense of satisfaction; "it never approached anything
like a feast, but it certainly has taught me to know when I have had
enough."

And the