r so little. How is old Miss Ritherdon?"

Murchison reddened with helpless rage; Captain Nugent, gazing at the
questioner with something almost approaching respect, waited breathlessly
for the invariable answer.

"She died three weeks ago; I'm surprised that you have not heard of it,"
said the doctor, pointedly.

"Of course she was old," said Hardy, with the air of one advancing
extenuating circumstances.

"Very old," replied the doctor, who knew that the other was now at the
end of his obituary list.

"Are there any other of my patients you are anxious to hear about?"

[Illustration: "Are there any other of my patients you are anxious to
hear about?"]

"No, thank you," returned Hardy, with some haste.

The doctor turned to his host again, but the charm was broken. His talk
was disconnected, owing probably to the fact that he was racking his
brain for facts relative to the seamy side of shipbroking. And Hardy,
without any encouragement whatever, was interrupting with puerile
anecdotes concerning the late lamented Joe Banks. The captain came to
the rescue.

"The ladies are in the garden," he said to the doctor; "perhaps you'd
like to join them."

He looked coldly over at Hardy as he spoke to see the effect of his
words. Their eyes met, and the young man was on his feet as soon as his
rival.

"Thanks," he said, coolly; "it is a trifle close indoors."

Before the dismayed captain could think of any dignified pretext to stay
him he was out of the room. The doctor followed and the perturbed
captain, left alone, stared blankly at the door and thought of his
daughter's words concerning the thin end of the wedge.

He was a proud man and loth to show discomfiture, so that it was not
until a quarter of an hour later that he followed his guests to the
garden. The four people were in couples, the paths favouring that
formation, although the doctor, to the detriment of the border, had made
two or three determined attempts to march in fours. With a feeling akin
to scorn the captain saw that he was walking with Mrs. Kingdom, while
some distance in the rear Jem Hardy followed with Kate.

He stood at the back door for a little while watching; Hardy, upright and
elate, was listening with profound attention to Miss Nugent; the doctor,
sauntering along beside Mrs. Kingdom, was listening with a languid air to
an account of her celebrated escape from measles some forty-three years
before. As a professional man he w