ou won't care to explain
how you came on board the _Naiad_?"

"I don't mind that," the ex-spy made concession. "I went out of England
after the Abbey affair--friends helped me away--and I worked in New York
till things grew too hot. Then I came over as a Red Cross nurse, got
into France, and stopped till the other day. I'd be there still if I
hadn't picked up a weekly London gossip-rag, and seen a paragraph about
a certain rumoured engagement! You can guess _whose_! It called
Roger--_my_ Roger, mind you!--a 'millionaire.' He never was poor, even
in my day; he'd made a lucky strike before we met, with an invention. I
said to myself: 'Linda, my girl, 'twould be tempting Providence to lie
low and let another woman spend his money.' I started as soon as I
could, but missed him in London, and hurried on to Plymouth. If it
hadn't been for that bally storm I shouldn't have caught him up! The
yacht would have sailed. As it was, before you came on board this
afternoon I presented myself, thickly veiled. I had a card from a London
newspaper, and an old card of Roger's which was among a few things of
his I'd kept for emergencies. I can copy his handwriting well enough not
be suspected, except by an intimate friend of his, so I scribbled on the
card an order to view the yacht. I got on all right, and wandered about
with a notebook and a stylo. I soon found the right place to hide--in
the storeroom, behind some barrels. But I had to make everyone who'd
seen me think I'd gone on shore. That was easy! I told a sailor fellow
by the gang plank I was going, and said I'd mislaid an envelope in which
I'd slipped a tip for him and another man. I thought I'd left it on a
table in the dining saloon, and he'd better look for it, or it might be
picked up by somebody. He went before I could say 'knife!' and the
envelope really _was_ there, so he didn't have to hurry back. Two
minutes later I was in the storeroom, and no one the wiser. Lord! but I
got the jumps waiting for the stewardesses to be safe in bed before I
could creep out to pay your cabin a call!"

"So, to cure the 'jumps' you annexed a whole bottle of brandy," I said.

"I did--for that and another reason you may find out by and by. But I'm
hanged if you're not a cool hand, for a young girl who has just heard
her lover's a married man. I thought by this time you'd be in
hysterics."

"Girls of _my_ generation don't have hysterics," I taunted her. By the
dyed hair and vestiges of rou