t. The only
satisfaction that came to Jill from the encounter was the knowledge
that Derek was still out of town. He had wired for his things, said
Freddie, and had retreated further north. Freddie, it seemed, had been
informed of the broken engagement by Lady Underhill in an interview
which appeared to have left a lasting impression on his mind. Of
Jill's monetary difficulties he had heard nothing.

After this meeting, Jill felt a slight diminution of the oppression
which weighed upon her. She could not have borne to have come
unexpectedly upon Derek, and, now that there was no danger of that,
she found life a little easier. The days passed somehow, and finally
there came the morning, when, accompanied by Uncle Chris--voluble and
explanatory about the details of what he called "getting everything
settled"--she rode in a taxi to take the train for Southampton. Her
last impression of London was of rows upon rows of mean houses, of
cats wandering in back-yards among groves of home-washed
underclothing, and a smoky greyness which gave way, as the train raced
on, to the clearer grey of the suburbs and the good green and brown of
the open country.

Then the bustle and confusion of the liner; the calm monotony of the
journey, when one came on deck each morning to find the vessel so
manifestly in the same spot where it had been the morning before that
it was impossible to realize that many hundred miles of ocean had
really been placed behind one; and finally the Ambrose Channel
lightship and the great bulk of New York rising into the sky like a
city of fairyland, heartening yet sinister, at once a welcome and a
menace.

"There you are, my dear?" said Uncle Chris indulgently, as though it
were a toy he had made for her with his own hands. "New York!"

They were standing on the boat-deck, leaning over the rail. Jill
caught her breath. For the first time since disaster had come upon her
she was conscious of a rising of her spirits. It is impossible to
behold the huge buildings which fringe the harbour of New York without
a sense of expectancy and excitement. There had remained in Jill's
mind from childhood memories a vague picture of what she now saw, but
it had been feeble and inadequate. The sight of this towering city
seemed somehow to blot out everything that had gone before. The
feeling of starting afresh was strong upon her.

Uncle Chris, the old traveller, was not emotionally affected. He
smoked placidly and talked