in grim keeping with the pitiless rustle of the sea.

And so they parted. I saw him move on towards the companion-way, and
though I felt instinctively that all had gone ill with him, I was
surprised to see how erect he walked. After a minute I approached her.
She heard me coming, and presently turned to me with a curious smile.
"Who is Mr. Charles Boyd?" she asked. "I did not pierce his disguise.
I could not tell whether I had met him on board before. Have I? But my
impression is that I had not seen him on the ship."

"No, you had not seen him," I replied. "He had a fancy to travel, until
yesterday, with the second-class passengers. Now he has a first-class
cabin--in his proper place, in fact."

"You think so--in his proper place?" The suggestion was not pleasant.

"Assuredly. Why do you speak in that way?" was my indignant reply.

She took my arm as we moved on. "Because he was slightly rude to me."

I grew bold, and determined to bring her to some sort of reckoning.

"How rude were you to him?"

"Not rude at all. It is not worth while being so--to anybody," was her
chilly answer.

"I was under the impression you had met him before," I said gravely.

"Indeed? And why?" She raised her eyebrows at me. I pushed the matter
to a conclusion. "He was ill the other day--he has heart trouble. It was
necessary for me to open the clothes about his neck. On his breast I saw
a little ivory portrait of a woman's head."

"A woman's head," she repeated absently, and her fingers idly toyed with
a jingling ornament in her belt. In an idle moment I had sketched the
head, as I remembered it, on a sheet of paper, and now I took it from
my pocket and handed it to her. We were standing near a port-hole of the
music saloon, from which light streamed.

"That is the head," said I.

She deliberately placed the paper in the belt of light, and, looking
at it, remarked mechanically: "This is the head, is it?" She showed no
change of countenance, and handed it back to me as if she had seen no
likeness. "It is very interesting," she said, "but one would think you
might make better use of your time than by surreptitiously sketching
portraits from sick men's breasts. One must have plenty of leisure to do
that sort of thing, I should think. Be careful that you do not get into
mischief, Dr. Marmion." She laughed. "Besides, where was the special
peculiarity in that portrait that you should treasure it in pencil
so conventionally?--Your drawi