I made a grimace. The confounded record of my family's descent was far from interesting me at that moment. "You earn more than your salary every hour," I said. "I am immensely in your debt already. By the way, I must pay you what I owe, before the sum gets any larger. It is quite three weeks and you have had nothing." I counted out sixty dollars in gold coin and she took it without a word. She was always doing something strange and I had ceased to wonder. I had imagined that she would say it was too much--or that I had reckoned the date of service too far back, or something of that kind. "Would you bathe my head a little?" she asked, indicating the cologne. I bathed her forehead, and found it as much too hot as her hands were too cold. It had a soothing effect on me, as well as on her, this action. It made me feel as I had not felt before, that our fortunes were really for the time running in the same mold. "Perhaps you could sleep a little before dinner," I suggested, after a time. "Let me leave you to try." She thanked me and before my hand left her, she put it gratefully to her lips. She did not kiss it, but rather breathed upon it a sigh of appreciation. Thorwald and Ingeborg had just arrived from town and it was evident that the former's claim that he remembered me was founded on fact. The little girl was too young at my former visit to recollect anything about it, but she seemed to know me in a way and nodded when her mother asked if she did not remember my face in the photograph that hung in the dining room. Thorwald was now nine and about the finest specimen of a little man I have ever seen. His father could not conceal his pride in the boy, and I did not blame him. "Ah, I am very happy with that little fellow!" he said, repeatedly. I looked over the harbor just before dinner was served and saw the Madiana getting under way, bound for St. Croix (or Santa Cruz, as we are more apt to call it.) Eggert rigged his powerful telescope for me in the doorway, where I could see without being seen. I easily picked out the passengers who were on deck. Mr. and Miss Howes and Mr. Edgerly were in one group. They were talking earnestly, and I guessed that Miss May and myself were quite likely the subject of their conversation. I imagined them wondering whether our stay on shore was the result of design or accident. I hoped Howes was getting his money's worth and that his "niece" was satisfied with the fish she had caught with her Herald hook. As far as I could judge neither of them had thus far repented of their bargain. I could hardly believe the lady had taken Miss May's ring, that she had entered my room and walked off with my shirt-stud. There was a big difference, it seemed to me, between a love affair based on natural law and a deliberate theft. The mysterious disappearance of the jewelry would probably never be accounted for and I certainly cared very little about it.