that."

"Ugh! I hope not," said the warder, with a shudder. "Seems to me time
I tried another way of getting my bread and cheese. Hark!"

"What at?"

"That. Someone hailed off the water. Quite low and faint, like a man
going down."

The clouds were lifting slowly in the east, and the misty, blurred face
of the moon began to show in the east, over the brimming water's rim.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

ALMOST BY ACCIDENT.

Time had crept on since the return of the Jerrolds, and by degrees the
pain of the meeting between Myra and Stratton grew less, and the wound
made that day began to heal.

"I'm sorry for him," Guest would say to himself; "but I can't keep away
because he is unhappy."

So he visited at the admiral's, where he always found a warm welcome,
but made little progress with Edie, who seemed to have grown cold.

Then, too, he met the cousins at Miss Jerrold's, and it naturally came
about that one evening, after a good deal of persuasion, Stratton became
his companion.

Myra was there that night, and once more their hands were clasped, while
Stratton felt that it was no longer the girl into whose eyes he looked,
but the quiet, thoughtful woman who had suffered in the struggle of
life, and that he must banish all hope of a nearer tie than that of
friendship.

For whatever Myra may have held hidden in her secret heart she was the
calm, self-contained friend to her aunt's guest. Ready to sit and talk
with him of current topics and their travels; to play or sing if asked;
but Stratton always left the house with the feeling that unconsciously
Myra had gravely impressed upon him the fact that she was James Barron's
wife, and that she would never seek to rid herself of that tie.

"And I must accept that position." Stratton would say despairingly,
after one of the meetings which followed; and then he would make a vow
never to meet Myra again, for the penance was too painful to be borne.

The result was that the very next day after making one of these vows he
received a letter from Edie, asking him, at her uncle's wish, to dinner
in Bourne Square.

For the admiral had said to Edie, on hearing that they had met Stratton
at her aunt's:

"Let bygones be bygones. I don't see why we should not all be friends
again. I always liked the boy. He can talk well about scientific
things without boring you. Ask him to dinner."

"Uncle wants him to come and wean poor Myra from that terrible
business."

But