asi-masonic ritual
which lent solemnity to his discourse.

"You are a long way ahead of your toast," said Isobel.

"Just as Magellan was ahead of his times," was the rejoinder.

"Yet he was a man of leisurely habit," put in Elsie, who found Dr.
Christobal's old-world manners full of charm and repose.

"How so?" said he, puzzled, for the worthy Portuguese navigator was
notoriously a swashbuckler.

"Otherwise he never could have christened any unhappy promontory by
such a long-winded name," she explained.

"Perhaps he met a contrary wind in that region," said Christobal,
laughing. "Monsieur de Poincilit here, were he in a very bad temper,
might exclaim, 'Mille diables!' Why should not our excellent Fernando
rail against the almost inconceivable fickleness which could be
displayed by eleven times as many young ladies?"

"I came out last time on the _Orellana_, and I don't even remember
passing such a place," said Isobel. She was a Chilean born and bred,
but she always affected European vagueness as to the topography of
South America. Dr. Christobal knew this weakness of hers; he also
remembered her beautiful half-caste mother, from whom Isobel inherited
her flashing eyes, her purple-red lips, and a skin in which the
exquisite flush of terra-cotta on her checks merged into the delicate
pallor of forehead and neck.

But, being a tactful man, he only answered: "Your English sailors, my
dear, who gruffly dubbed the adjacent point 'Cape Dungeness,' have
shortened Magellan's mouthful into 'Cape Virgins.'--Yet, Ursula was a
British saint, and her memory ought to be revered, if only because it
keeps alive a classic pun."

A born raconteur, he paused.

"Go right ahead, doctor," came a voice from the lower end of the table.

"Well, the story runs that Princess Ursula fled from Britain to Rome to
escape marriage with a pagan--"

"How odd!" interrupted Isobel, and Elsie alone understood the drift of
her comment.

"Not at all odd if she didn't happen to like him," said Christobal.
"She reached Cologne, and was martyred there by the Huns. Long
afterwards a stone was found with the inscription _Ursula et
Undecimilla Virgines_, which was incorrectly translated into 'Ursula
and her Eleven Thousand Virgins.' Some later critic pointed out that a
missing comma after Undecimilla, the name of a handmaid, made all the
difference, assuming that two young ladies were a more reasonable and
probable number than eleven thousand