to
America to visit sick brother and look after business complications.
We've dealt with weighty affairs already this morning."

"What's become of your Mr. Dauncey, then?" Sybil enquired.

"I have made him secretary of the Cropstone Wood Estates Company,"
Jacob told her. "He has my affairs to look after as well while I am
away."

A sound familiar to the nautical ears of Lord Felixstowe reached them
from the bows of the ship.

"Sun's over the yardarm," he announced. "How are you feeling now,
old--Mr. Pratt?"

"You order," Jacob replied.

It was a moderately cheerful little party who drank the health of the
bride and bridegroom. Afterwards, however, Jacob passed a day of
curiously tangled sensations. The summons to New York had been too
peremptory for him to delay even an hour, but he had sent a note to
Miss Bultiwell at the address in Belgrave Square, asking for a few
minutes' interview before he left. Naturally he had received no
answer. Now he was face to face with absolute and accomplished
failure in one of the fixed purposes of his life. He was an obstinate
person, used to success,--so used to it, in fact, that the present
situation left him dazed. His first determination, when success had
smiled upon him, had been to marry Sybil Bultiwell. He had never
flinched from that purpose. He had even, in his heart, considered
himself engaged. Any thoughts which might have come to him of any
other woman he had pushed away as a species of infidelity. And now
there wasn't any Sybil Bultiwell. She was married and out of his
reach. He felt that the proper thing for him to do was to go down to
his cabin and nurse his broken heart; instead of which he drank
champagne for dinner, found a few kindred spirits who liked a mild
game of poker, and went to bed whistling at two o'clock in the
morning. His young companion, who had won a fiver and was in a most
beatific state, came and sat on his bunk whilst he undressed.

"Jacob, my well-beloved," he said, "you are taking this little setback
like a hero."

"What setback?" Jacob asked.

"Little affair of Miss Bultiwell," Felixstowe replied, gazing
admiringly at Jacob's well-suspended silk socks. "Mary told me all
about it."

Jacob sighed heavily.

"Nasty knock for me," he admitted, with a curiously unconvincing note
of gloom in his tone.

"And Mary, poor old girl, is in the same boat," Felixstowe went on
reflectively. "Still, she never cared much for Maurice ... led him an