musicians' gallery wouldn't be a bad place, would it,
Mr. Ollerenshaw?" Emanuel suggested, respectfully.

James trained his eye on the spot. "The very thing, lad!" said he, with
enthusiasm.

"Lad!" Helen had not recovered from a private but extreme astonishment
at this singular mark of paternal familiarity to Emanuel when there was
another and a far louder ring at the door.

Georgiana minced and tripped out of her retreat, and opened the majestic
portal to a still greater surprise for Helen. The ringer was Mr. Andrew
Dean--Mr. Andrew Dean with his dark, quasi-hostile eyes, and his heavy
shoulders, and his defiant, suspicious bearing--Mr. Andrew Dean in
workaday clothes and with hands that could not be called clean. Andrew
stared about him like a scout, and then advanced rapidly to Helen and
seized her hand, hurting it.

"I was just passing," said he, in a hoarse voice. "I expected you'd be
in a bit of a mess, so I thought I might be useful. How d'ye do, Mr.
Ollerenshaw?" And he hurt James's hand also.

"It's very kind of you," Helen remarked, flushing.

"How do, Prockter?" Andrew jerked out at Emanuel, not taking his hand.

This abstention on Andrew's part from physical violence was capable of
two interpretations. The natural interpretation was that Andrew's social
methods were notoriously casual and capricious. The interesting
interpretation was that a failure of the negotiations between Emanuel
and Andrew for a partnership--a failure which had puzzled Bursley--had
left rancour behind it.

Emanuel, however, displayed no symptom of being disturbed. His blandness
remained intact. Nevertheless, the atmosphere was mysteriously electric.
Helen felt it to be so, and an atmosphere which is deemed to be electric
by even one person only, _ipso facto_, is electric. As for James
Ollerenshaw, he was certainly astonished by the visit of Andrew Dean;
but, being absorbed in the welfare of his ship and ocean, he permitted
his astonishment to dissolve in a vague satisfaction that, anyhow,
Helen's unexplained quarrel with Andrew Dean was really at an end. This
call was assuredly Andrew's way of expiatory repentance.

"The very thing!" he repeated, glancing at Emanuel as if in expectation.

Emanuel did not seem to comprehend that aught was expected of him. He
amiably stood, with hands still appropriately gloved, and his kindly
glance wandered between the ship and ocean and the spot which he had hit
on for the ship and ocean's