hers were well-nigh
faultless in their sweet, warm, rosy curves, faultless as the white,
even teeth that gleamed in her merry laughter. He was reserved and
taciturn, even gloomy at times, facts which, through no fault or
connivance of hers, were presently explained and only served to heighten
the interest she had begun to feel in him. She was frankness, almost
loquacity itself,--a girl who could no more keep a secret than she could
harbor a grudge. He was studious, thoughtful, forever reading. She loved
air, sunshine, action, travel, tennis, dancing, music (of the waltz
variety), and, beyond her Bible and her Baedeker, read nothing at all,
and not too much of them! She was with her aunt and some American
friends when first she met him. It was the morning they hove in sight
of England, and the steamer was pitching through a head sea. Her party
were wretchedly ill; she was aggressively well. She had risen early and
gone up to the promenade deck in hopes of getting the first glimpse of
Bishop's Rock, and found the spray dashing high over the bows, drenching
her accustomed perch on the forward deck and keeping people
within-doors.

It was too early for those who had been her beaux and gallants on the
swift spring run; a late session in the smoking-room the night before
had kept them below. Only one man was visible at the rail under the
bridge,--the tall, dark, military-looking American who seemed to divide
his time between reading and tramping on the promenade deck, pacing the
planks with long, swinging stride and never seeming to care for other
society than his own thoughts. He was on deck and keenly enjoying the
strong, salt wind and its whistling load of spray; and, clinging to the
stanchions at the saloon door, wistfully did Miss Allison regard him,
but only as the means to an end. She wanted to get there, and did not
see a way without a helping hand, and just here old Neptune seemed to
tender it. A huge, foam-crested billow came sweeping straight from the
invisible shores of Albion, burst in magnificent deluge upon the port
bow, lifted high in air one instant the heaving black mass of the stem,
then let it down with stomach-stirring swish deep into the hollow
beyond,--deep, deep into the green mountain that followed, careening
the laboring steamer far over to starboard, and shooting Miss Allison,
as plump and pleasing a projectile as was ever catapulted, straight from
the brass-bound door-way, across the slippery deck