man like you--is different. If I were to
introduce you, couldn't you look after him a bit--just till we get
across?"

With much simplicity she made her request, but there was a tinge of
anxiety in her eyes. Certainly West, staring steadily forth over the
grey waste of tumbling waters, looked sufficiently forbidding.

After several seconds of silence he flung an abrupt question:

"Why don't you ask some one else?"

"There is no one else," she answered.

"No one else?" He made a gesture of impatient incredulity.

"No one that I can trust," she explained.

"And you trust me?"

"Of course I do."

"Why?" Again he looked at her with a piercing scrutiny. His eyes held a
savage, almost a threatening expression.

But the girl only laughed, lightly and confidently.

"Why? Oh, just because you are trustworthy, I guess. I can't think of
any other reason."

West's look relaxed, became abstracted, and finally fell away from her.

"You appear to be a lady of some discernment," he observed drily.

She proffered her hand impulsively, her eyes dancing.

"My, that's the first pretty thing you've said to me!" she declared
flippantly. "I just like you, Mr. West!"

West was feeling for his cigarette case. He gave her his hand without
looking at her, as if her approbation did not greatly gratify him. When
she was gone he moved away along the wind-swept deck with his collar up
to his ears and his head bent to the gale. His conversation with the
American girl had not apparently made him feel any more sociably
inclined towards his fellow-passengers.

* * * * *

Certainly, as Cynthia had declared, young Archibald Bathurst was an
exceedingly reckless player. He lacked the judgment and the cool brain
essential to a good cardplayer, with the result that he lost much more
often than he won. But notwithstanding this fact he had a passion for
cards which no amount of defeat could abate--a passion which he never
failed to indulge whenever an opportunity presented itself.

At the very moment when his cousin was making her petition on his behalf
to the surly Englishman on deck, he was seated in the saloon with three
or four men older than himself, playing and losing, playing and losing,
with almost unvarying monotony, yet with a feverish relish that had in
it something tragic.

He was only three-and-twenty, and, as he was wont to remark, ill-luck
dogged him persistently at every turn. He never blame