e to look at the item "bills discounted" on Verity's page
in the ledger. More than that, a lawyer was instructed to draw up a
partnership deed, and the representatives of various ship-building
firms were asked to supply estimates for two new vessels.

Altogether Dickey was complaisant, and David enjoyed a busy and
successful day. He dined in town, came home at a late hour, and merely
grinned when a servant told him that Mr. Bulmer had called twice but
Miss Iris happened to be out on both occasions.

Nevertheless, at breakfast on Tuesday, he warned his niece not to keep
her admirer dangling at arm's length.

"E's a queer owd codger," explained the philosopher. "Play up to 'im a
bit, an' you'll be able to twist 'im round your little finger. I
b'lieve he's goin' dotty, an' you can trust me to see that the marriage
settlement is O. K."

"Will you be home to dinner?" was her response.

"No. Now that the firm is in smooth water again I must show myself a
bit. It's all thanks to you, lass, an' I'll not forget it. Good-by!"

Iris smiled, and Verity was vastly pleased.

"I am sure you will not forget," she said. "Good-by."

"There's no understandin' wimmin," mused David, as his victoria swept
through the gates of Linden House. "Sunday afternoon Dickey might ha'
bin a dose of rat poison; now she's ready to swaller 'im as if 'e was a
chocolate drop."

Again he returned some few minutes after midnight; again the servant
announced Mr. Bulmer's visits, three of them; and again Miss Iris had
been absent--in fact, she had not yet come home.

"Not 'ome!" cried David furiously. "W'y it's gone twelve. W'ere
the--w'ere is she?"

No one knew. She had quitted the house soon after Verity himself, and
had not been seen since. Storm and rage as he might, and did, David
could not discover his niece's whereabouts. He spent a wearying and
tortured night, a harassed and miserable day, devoted to frantic
inquiries in every possible direction with interludes of specious lying
to the infatuated Bulmer. But enlightment came on Thursday morning. A
letter arrived by the first post. It was from Iris.

"MY DEAR UNCLE," she wrote: "Neither you nor Mr. Bulmer should have any
objection to my passing the few remaining weeks of my liberty in the
manner best pleasing to myself. On Sunday evening, in your presence,
Mr. Bulmer urged me to fix an early date for our marriage. Tell him
that I shall marry him when the _Andromeda_ ret