dulgence and unlimited credit, gave
a little cry of pleasure at sight of the nest that had been made ready
for her.

'Really, Mr. Smithson is immensely kind!' she exclaimed.

'Smithson is always kind,' answered Lady Kirkbank, 'and you don't half
enough appreciate him. He has given me his very own cabin--such a dear
little den! There are his cigar boxes and everything lovely on the
shelves, and his own particular dressing-case put open for me to
use--all the backs of all the brushes _repousse_ silver, and all the
scent-bottles filled expressly for me. If the yacht would only stand
quite still, I should think it more delicious than the best house I ever
stayed in: only I don't altogether enjoy that little way it has of
gurgling up and down perpetually.'

Mr. Smithson's chief butler, a German Swiss, and a treasure of
intelligence, had come down to take the domestic arrangements of the
yacht into his control. The Park Lane _chef_ was also on board, Mr.
Smithson's steward acting as his subordinate. This great man grumbled
sorely at the smallness of his surroundings; for the most luxurious
yacht was a poor substitute for the spacious kitchens and storerooms and
stillrooms of the London mansion. There was a cabin for Lady Kirkbank's
Rilboche and Lady Lesbia's Kibble, where the two might squabble at their
leisure; in a word, everything had been done that forethought could do
to make the yacht as perfect a place of sojourn as any floating
habitation, from Noah's Ark to the Orient steamers, had ever been made.

It was between four and five upon a delicious July afternoon that Lady
Kirkbank and her charge came on board. The maids and the luggage had
been sent a day in advance, so that everything might be in its place,
and the empty boxes all stowed away, before the ladies arrived. They had
nothing to do but walk on board and fling themselves into the low
luxurious chairs ready for them on the deck, a little wearied by the
heat and dust of a railway journey, and with that delicious sense of
languid indifference to all the cares of life which seems to be in the
very atmosphere of a perfect summer afternoon.

A striped awning covered the deck, and great baskets of roses--pink, and
red, and yellow--were placed about here and there. Tea was ready on a
low table, a swinging brass kettle hissing merrily, with an air of
supreme homeliness.

Mr. Smithson had accompanied his _fiancee_ from town, and now sat
reading the _Globe_, and m