ompanion.

"With me?" asked Little Miss Grouch, bland surprise in her voice.

"Yes. I have a message."

Little Miss Grouch waited.

"A private message," continued the lady.

"Is it very private? You know Mr. Daddleskink-Smith, I believe?"

"I've seen Mr. Daddleskink-Smith," frigidly replied the lady, mistaking
the introducer's hesitation for a hyphen, "if that is what he calls
himself now."

"It isn't," said the Tyro. "You know, Mrs. Denyse, I've always held that
the permutation of names according to the taste of the inheritor, is one
of the most interesting phases of social ingenuity."

Mrs. Charlton Denyse, relict of the late Charley Dennis, turned a deep
Tyrian purple. "If you would be good enough--" she began, when the girl
broke in:--

"Is your message immediate, Mrs. Denyse?"

"It is from my cousin, Mr. Van Dam."

"To me?" cried the girl.

"No. To me. By wireless. But it concerns you."

"In that case I don't think I'm interested," said the girl, her color
rising. "You must excuse me." And she walked on.

"Then the gentlemanly spider on the hot griddle loses," murmured the
Tyro.

"I don't know whom you mean," said the girl, obstinately.

"I mean that your foot-destroying 'Never-never-never' holds good."

"Yes," she replied. "I did think I _might_ marry him once. But now," she
added pensively and unguardedly, "I know I never could."

The Tyro's heart came into his throat--except that portion of it which
looked out of his eyes.

"Why?"

A flame rose in Little Miss Grouch's cheeks, and subsided, leaving her
shaking.

"Why?" He had halted her beside the rail, and was trying to look into
her face, which was averted toward the sea, and quivering with panic of
the peril suddenly become imminent again.

Lord Guenn, approaching along the deck, furnished Little Miss Grouch an
inspiration, the final flash of hope of the hard-pressed.

"Shut your eyes," she bade her terrifying slave.

"What for?"

"Obey!"

"They're shut."

"Tight?"

"Under sealed orders."

Little Miss Grouch made a swift signal to the approaching Englishman,
and executed a silent maneuver.

"Count three," she directed breathlessly, "before you ask again or open
your eyes."

"One--two--three," said the Tyro slowly. "_Why?_"

"Hanged if I know, my dear fellow," replied Lord Guenn, upon whose trim
elegance the Tyro's discomfited vision rested.

Little Miss Grouch had vanished.

IX

Ninth day out.