heart was eased of its burden, and Margaret's dark cheek
grew darker with the sun and the wind that she took no pains to keep
from her face, though the olive flushed sometimes to a warmer hue, with
pleasure--or what? She thought it was the salt breeze.

"How well those two look!" exclaimed Lady Victoria once to Mr. Barker.

"I have seen Claudius look ghastly," said Barker, for he thought they
looked too "well" altogether.

"Yes; do you remember one morning--I think it was the day before, or the
day after, the accident? I thought he was going to faint."

"Perhaps he was sea-sick," suggested Barker.

"Oh no, we were a week out then, and he was never ill at all from the
first."

"Perhaps he was love-sick," said the other, willing to be spiteful.

"How ridiculous! To think of such a thing!" cried the stalwart English
girl; for she was only a girl in years despite her marriage. "But
really," she continued, "if I were going to write a novel I would put
those two people in it, they are so awfully good-looking. I would make
all my heroes and heroines beautiful if I wrote books."

"Then I fear I shall never be handed down to posterity by your pen, Lady
Victoria," said Barker, with a smile.

"No," said she, eyeing him critically, "I don't think I would put you in
my book. But then, you know, I would not put myself in it either."

"Ah," grinned Mr. Barker, "the book would lose by that, but I should
gain."

"How?" asked her ladyship.

"Because we should both be well out of it," said he, having reached his
joke triumphantly. But Lady Victoria did not like Mr. Barker, or his
jokes, very much. She once said so to her brother. She thought him
spiteful.

"Well, Vick," said her brother good-naturedly, "I daresay you are
right. But he amuses me, and he is very square on settling days."

* * * * *

Meanwhile Lady Victoria was not mistaken--Mr. Barker was spiteful; but
she did not know that she was the only member of the party to whom he
ventured to show it, because he thought she was stupid, and because it
was such a relief to say a vicious thing now and then. He devoted
himself most assiduously to Miss Skeat, since Margaret would not accept
his devotion to her, and indeed had given him little chance to show that
he would offer it. The days sped fast for some of the party, slowly for
others, and pretty much as they did anywhere else for the Duke, who was
in no especial hurry to arrive in New