hands in mild protest--"I know you didn't mean it, but barbed shafts of
humor often fall in places where they hurt, and it is terrible to think
of your nephew being mixed up in a murder, and an abduction, and----"

She broke off in mid-career, and fixed a stern eye on Devar.

"Are you quite sure he didn't get flirting with some giddy young thing
on board?" she demanded. "I've heard and read of some strange
goings-on among people crossing the Atlantic. I could tell you of two
marriages and no less than five divorces which----"

Devar was a polite young man, but he thought the situation called for
firmness.

"To the best of my belief, your nephew never so much as spoke to any
lady on the ship," he vowed. "He read a good deal, and played cards
occasionally, and walked the decks with me when the weather permitted,
but he did not even mention a woman's name except your own, madam."

"The marvel is that he mentioned us at all," said Horace.

Devar thought in his own mind, that the elder Curtis might be ponderous
in body and speech but he certainly revealed horse sense when he opened
his mouth.

"And whose fault was that, I should like to know?" cried Mrs. Curtis.
"Didn't your own brother quarrel with you because you said he ought to
have married a woman of some stability of character, and not a pretty,
feather-headed girl who spent her days reading poetry and her nights in
attending lectures, and who didn't begin to understand the A.B.C. of a
wife's domestic duties?"

"Maybe I was wrong and he was right," said her husband.

"Horace!"

Mrs. Curtis was marshaling her forces for a mighty effort when the door
opened, and Steingall entered, accompanied by a tall, well set-up man
in evening dress, and wearing an open overcoat and green Homburg hat.

"Well," cried Devar, springing forward with outstretched hand, "I'm
mighty glad to see you, John D.!"

The newcomer's face lit with pleasure, but before he could utter a
responsive word Mrs. Curtis gurgled:

"John D.! . . . Are you John Delancy Curtis? . . . Horace, is this
your nephew?"

"Judging from his looks, Louisa, he ought to be," said the stout man,
gazing at the stranger with wide-eyed astonishment.

The Christian names of the couple acted like a galvanic battery on
Curtis. At first, he could hardly believe his ears, but some
resemblance in the portly Curtis to his own father warned him that this
night of nights had not yet exhausted its store of stupef