ht it a little humiliating afterwards,
but for the moment all sorts of conventional barriers seemed to melt
away. After all she was a woman, and some years ago she had been a young
one. Lord Redgrave was an almost perfect specimen of English manhood in
its early prime. He was one of the richest peers in England, and he was
bringing her her coffee. As she said afterwards, she wilted, and she
couldn't help it.

"I'm afraid I have kept you waiting a long time for your coffee,
ladies," said Redgrave, as he balanced the tray on one hand and drew a
wicker table towards them with the other. "You see there are only two of
us on board this craft, and as my engineer is navigating the ship, I
have to attend to the domestic arrangements."

Mrs. Van Stuyler looked at him in the silence of mental paralysis. Miss
Zaidie frowned, smiled, and then began to laugh.

"Well, of all the cold-blooded English ways of putting things----" she
began.

"I beg your pardon?" said Lord Redgrave as he put the tray down on the
table.

"What Miss Rennick means, Lord Redgrave," interrupted Mrs. Van Stuyler,
struggling out of her paralytic condition, "and what I, too, should like
to say, is that under the circumstances----"

"You think that I am not as penitent as I ought to be. Is that so?" said
Redgrave, with a glance and a smile mostly directed towards Miss Zaidie.
"Well, to tell you the truth," he went on, "I am not a bit penitent. On
the contrary, I am very glad to have been able to assist the Fates as
far as I have done."

"Assist the Fates!" gasped Mrs. Van Stuyler, helping herself shakingly
to sugar, while Miss Zaidie folded a gossamer slice of bread and butter
and began to eat it; "I think, Lord Redgrave, that if you knew _all_ the
circumstances, you would say that you were working against them."

"My dear Mrs. Van Stuyler," he replied, as he filled his own coffee cup,
"I quite agree with you as to certain fates, but the Fates which I mean
are the ones which, with good or bad reason, I think are working on my
side. Besides, I _do_ know all the circumstances, or at least the most
important of them. That knowledge is, in fact, my principal excuse for
bringing you so unceremoniously above the clouds."

As he said this he took a sideway glance at Miss Zaidie. She dropped her
eyelids and went on eating her bread and butter; but there was a little
deepening of the flush on her cheeks which was to him as the first flush
of sunrise to a benigh