ing, the
loving hunger in her eyes, the sweet trust that animated her face, the
delightful appropriation of him that could scarcely brook a moment's
absence from her sight. There could not be a stronger appeal to his
manhood and his fidelity.

"Yes, Jack dear, it was a little lonesome." She was swinging in her
hammock on the veranda in sight of the sea, and Jack sat by her with his
cigar. "I don't mind telling you now that there were times when I longed
for you dreadfully, but I was glad, all the same, that you were enjoying
yourself, for it is tiresome down here for a man with nothing to do but
to wait."

"You dear thing!" said Jack, with his hand on her head, smoothing her
glossy hair and pushing it back from her forehead, to make her look more
intellectual--a thing which she hated. "Yes, dear, I was a brute to go
off at all."

"But you wanted to comeback?" And there was a wistful look in her eyes.

"Indeed I did," he answered, fervently, as he leaned over the hammock
to kiss the sweet eyes into content; and he was quite honest in the
expression of a desire that was nearly forty-eight hours old, and by a
singular mental reaction seemed to have been always present with him.

"It was so good of you to telegraph me before I could see the
newspaper."

"Of course I knew the account would be greatly exaggerated;" and he made
light of the whole affair, knowing that the facts would still be
capable of shocking her, giving a comic picture of the Major's seafaring
qualities, and Carmen's and Miss Tavish's chaff of the gallant old beau.

Even with this light sketching of the event she could not avoid a
retrospective pang of apprehension, and the tightened grasp of his hand
was as if she were holding him fast from that and all other peril.

The days went by in content, on the whole, shaded a little by anxiety
and made grave by a new interest. It could not well be but that the
prospect of the near future, with its increase of responsibility, should
create a little uneasiness in Jack's mind as to his own career. Of this
future they talked much, and in Jack's attitude towards her Edith saw,
for the first time since her marriage, a lever of suggestion, and it
came naturally in the contemplation of their future life that she
should encourage his discontent at having no occupation. Facing, in this
waiting-time of quiet, certain responsibilities, it was impressed upon
him that the collecting of bric-a-brac was scarcely an occup