, "when he and father were talking that way about Madame
Alvarez."

"Yes, upon my word," exclaimed her sister, impatiently tossing her hair
back over her shoulders. "I really cannot see that Madame Alvarez is
in need of any champion. I thought Mr. Clay made it very much worse by
rushing in the way he did. Why should he take it upon himself to
correct a man as old as my father?"

"I suppose because Madame Alvarez is a friend of his," Hope answered.

"My dear child, a beautiful woman can always find some man to take her
part," said Miss Langham. "But I've no doubt," she added, rising and
kissing her sister good-night, "that he is all that your Captain Stuart
thinks him; but he is not going to keep us awake any longer, is he,
even if he does show such gallant interest in old ladies?"

"Old ladies!" exclaimed Hope in amazement.

"Why, Alice!"

But her sister only laughed and waved her out of the room, and Hope
walked away frowning in much perplexity.

V

The visit to the city was imitated on the three succeeding evenings by
similar excursions. On one night they returned to the plaza, and the
other two were spent in drifting down the harbor and along the coast on
King's yacht. The President and Madame Alvarez were King's guests on
one of these moonlight excursions, and were saluted by the proper
number of guns, and their native band played on the forward deck. Clay
felt that King held the centre of the stage for the time being, and
obliterated himself completely. He thought of his own paddle-wheel
tug-boat that he had had painted and gilded in her honor, and smiled
grimly.

MacWilliams approached him as he sat leaning back on the rail and
looking up, with the eye of a man who had served before the mast, at
the lacework of spars and rigging above him. MacWilliams came toward
him on tiptoe and dropped carefully into a wicker chair. "There don't
seem to be any door-mats on this boat," he said. "In every other
respect she seems fitted out quite complete; all the latest magazines
and enamelled bathtubs, and Chinese waiter-boys with cock-tails up
their sleeves. But there ought to be a mat at the top of each of those
stairways that hang over the side, otherwise some one is sure to soil
the deck. Have you been down in the engine-room yet?" he asked. "Well,
don't go, then," he advised, solemnly. "It will only make you feel
badly. I have asked the Admiral if I can send those half-breed engine
drivers over