hird that they quarreled violently on the
way home from church and have not been on speaking terms since. I
daresay there are many others, but whatever did happen, and something
evidently did, Joan is happy enough, and every man in the house is
sentimental about her. Look out there, for instance."

Mrs. Jekyll followed her glance and saw a girl in bathing clothes
sitting on the beach under a red and blue striped umbrella encircled by
the outstretched forms of half a dozen men. Beyond, on the fringe of a
sea alive with bursting breakers, several girls were bathing alone.

"H'm," said Mrs. Jekyll. "I should think that the second story is the
true one. A tip-tilted nose, chestnut hair and brown eyes are better to
flirt with than marry. Well, I must run away if I'm to be back to
lunch. I wish I could stay, but Edmond and his artist may kill my new
butler unless I intervene. They are both hotly pro-Ally. By the way, I
hear that Alice Palgrave has gone to the Maine coast with her mother,
who is ill again; I wonder where Gilbert is going?"

"Well, I had a very charming letter from him two days ago, asking me if
he could come and stay with us. He loves this house and the beach, and
I always cheer him up, he said, and he is very lonely without Alice. Of
course I said yes, and he will be here this afternoon."

Whereupon, having landed her fish, Mrs. Jekyll rose to go. Gilbert
Palgrave and Joan Gray,--there was truth in that story, as she had
thought. She had heard of his having been seen everywhere with Joan
night after night, and her sister-in-law, who lived opposite to the
little house in East Sixty-seventh Street, had seen him leaving in the
early hours of the morning more than once. A lucky strike, indeed.
Intuition was a wonderful gift. She was highly pleased with herself.

"Good-by, my dear," she said. "I will drive over again one day this
week and see how you are all getting on in this beautiful corner of the
world. My love to Prim, please, and do remember me to the little siren."

And away she went, leaving Mrs. Hosack to wonder what was the meaning
of her rather curious smile. Only a hidebound prejudice on the part of
the Ministries of all the nations has precluded women from the
Diplomatic Service.

II

"Ah, here you are," said Hosack, scrambling a little stiffly out of a
hammock. "Well, have you had a good ride?"

Joan came up the steps with Harry Oldershaw, the nice boy. She was in
white linen riding