for no one else, least of all for the supremely
handsome gentleman who was her sister's betrothed, and who talked to her
father; while Sir Ronald glowered over a book.

The ringing of the luncheon-bell brought Grace and Eeny, and all were
soon seated around the Captain's hospitable board.

Lieutenant Reginald Stanford laid himself out to be fascinating, and was
fascinating. There was a subtle charm in his handsome face, in his
brilliant smile and glance, in his pleasant voice, in his wittily-told
stories, and inexhaustible fund of anecdote and mimicry. Now he was in
Ireland, now in France, now in Scotland, now in Yorkshire; and the bad
English and the _patois_ and accent of all were imitated to the life.
With that face, that voice, that talent for imitation, Lieutenant
Stanford, in another walk of life, might have made his fortune on the
stage. His power of fascination was irresistible. Grace felt it, Eeny
felt it, all felt it, except Sir Ronald Keith. He sat like the Marble
Guest, not fascinated, not charmed, black and unsmiling.

Rose, too--what was the matter with Rose? She, so acutely alive to
well-told stories, to handsome faces, so rigidly cold, and stately, and
uninterested now. She shrugged her dimpled shoulders when the table was
in a roar; she opened her rather small hazel eyes and stared, as if she
wondered, what they could see to laugh at. She did not even deign to
glance at him, the hero of the feast; and, in fact, so greatly overdid
her part as to excite the suspicions of that astute young man, Doctor
Danton. There is no effect without a cause. What was the cause of Rose's
icy indifference? He looked at her, then at Stanford, then back at her,
and set himself to watch.

"She has met him before," thought the shrewd Doctor; "but where, if he
has just come from England? I'll ask him, I think."

It was some time before there was a pause in the conversation. In the
first, Dr. Frank struck in.

"How did you come, Mr. Stanford?" he asked.

"On the Hysperia, from Southampton to New York."

"How long ago?" inquired Kate, indirectly helping him; "a week?"

"No," said Lieutenant Stanford, coolly carving his cold ham; "nearly
five."

Every one stared. Kate looked blankly amazed.

"Impossible!" she exclaimed; "five weeks since you landed in New York?
Surely not."

"Quite true, I assure you. The way was this--"

He paused and looked at Rose, who had spilled a glass of wine, trying to
lift it, in a hand t