divided
between despair and disgust, Mr. Staff gave the problem up against his
arrival on board the steamship. There remained to him a single gleam of
hope: a note of explanation had been promised; he thought it just
possible that it might have been sent to the steamship rather than to
his lodgings in London.

Therefore, the moment he set foot aboard the ship, he consigned his
hand-luggage to a steward, instructing the fellow where to take it, and
hurried off to the dining-saloon where, upon a table round which
passengers buzzed like flies round a sugar-lump, letters and telegrams
for the departing were displayed. But he could find nothing for Mr.
Benjamin Staff.

Disappointed and indignant to the point of suppressed profanity, he
elbowed out of the thronged saloon just in time to espy a steward (quite
another steward: not him with whom Staff had left his things)
struggling up the main companionway under the handicap of several
articles of luggage which Staff didn't recognise, and one which he
assured himself he did: a bandbox as like the cause of all his
perturbation as one piano-case resembles another.

Now if quite out of humour with the bandbox and all that appertained
thereunto, the temper of the young man was such that he was by no means
prepared to see it confiscated without his knowledge or consent. In two
long strides he overhauled the steward, plucked him back with a
peremptory hand, and abashed him with a stern demand:

"I say! where the devil do you think you're going, my man?"

His man showed a face of dashed amazement.

"Beg pardon, sir! Do you mean _me_?"

"Most certainly I mean you. That's my bandbox. What are you doing with
it?"

Looking guiltily from his face to the article in question, the steward
flushed and stammered--culpability incarnate, thought Staff.

"Your bandbox, sir?"

"Do you think I'd go charging all over this ship for a silly bandbox
that wasn't mine?"

"But, sir--"

"I tell you, it's mine. It's tagged with my name. Where's the steward I
left it with?"

"But, sir," pleaded the accused, "this belongs to this lidy 'ere. I'm
just tikin' it to 'er stiteroom, sir."

Staff's gaze followed the man's nod, and for the first time he became
aware that a young woman stood a step or two above them, half turned
round to attend to the passage, her air and expression seeming to
indicate a combination of amusement and impatience.

Precipitately the young man removed his hat. Through