She breathed a long sigh of remembrance. “Oh, just at first, you know--one never is.” He laid his hand on hers with a gesture of intelligence and pity. “You’ll see, you’ll see,” he said. A shadow lengthened down the deck before them, and a steward stood there, proffering a Marconigram. “Oh, now I shall know!” she exclaimed. She tore the message open, and then let it fall on her knees, dropping her hands on it in silence. Ide’s enquiry roused her: “It’s all right?” “Oh, quite right. Perfectly. She can’t come; but she’s sending Susy Suffern. She says Susy will explain.” After another silence she added, with a sudden gush of bitterness: “As if I needed any explanation!” She felt Ide’s hesitating glance upon her. “She’s in the country?” “Yes. ‘Prevented last moment. Longing for you, expecting you. Love from both.’ Don’t you _see_, the poor darling, that she couldn’t face it?” “No, I don’t.” He waited. “Do you mean to go to her immediately?” “It will be too late to catch a train this evening; but I shall take the first to-morrow morning.” She considered a moment. “‘Perhaps it’s better. I need a talk with Susy first. She’s to meet me at the dock, and I’ll take her straight back to the hotel with me.” As she developed this plan, she had the sense that Ide was still thoughtfully, even gravely, considering her. When she ceased, he remained silent a moment; then he said almost ceremoniously: “If your talk with Miss Suffern doesn’t last too late, may I come and see you when it’s over? I shall be dining at my club, and I’ll call you up at about ten, if I may. I’m off to Chicago on business to-morrow morning, and it would be a satisfaction to know, before I start, that your cousin’s been able to reassure you, as I know she will.” He spoke with a shy deliberateness that, even to Mrs. Lidcote’s troubled perceptions, sounded a long-silenced note of feeling. Perhaps the breaking down of the barrier of reticence between them had released unsuspected emotions in both. The tone of his appeal moved her curiously and loosened the tight strain of her fears. “Oh, yes, come--do come,” she said, rising. The huge threat of New York was imminent now, dwarfing, under long reaches of embattled masonry, the great deck she stood on and all the little specks of life it carried. One of them, drifting nearer, took the shape of her maid, followed by luggage-laden stewards, and signing to her that it was time to go below. As they descended to the main deck, the throng swept her against Mrs. Lorin Boulger’s shoulder, and she heard the ambassadress call out to some one, over the vexed sea of hats: “So sorry! I should have been delighted, but I’ve promised to spend Sunday with some friends at Lenox.” II Susy Suffern’s explanation did not end till after ten o’clock, and she had just gone when Franklin Ide, who, complying with an old New York tradition, had caused himself to be preceded by a long white box of roses, was shown into Mrs. Lidcote’s sitting-room.