“Ah!” the Frenchman said, with a meaning smile. “What you in the States call a breach of the promise?” “Exactly!” Brainard replied hastily, glad to accept such a credible fiction. “She seems sorry to let you make the journey alone, eh?” “Rather!” The story circulated on the ship that evening, and gave Brainard a jocular notoriety in the smoking room among the German and French business men, who composed most of the _Toulouse’s_ first-cabin list. It was forgotten, however, before he emerged from his cabin, to which the remains of the “norther” had quickly driven him. By this time—it was the fourth day out—the _Toulouse_ was in the grasp of the Gulf Stream, lazily plowing her twelve knots an hour into the North Atlantic, and the passengers were betting their francs on the probable day of arrival at Havre. That evening, at dinner, Brainard ordered a bottle of champagne, and murmured, as he raised the glass to his lips: “Here’s to Melody—whoever and whatever and wherever she may be!” His youthful fancy, warmed by the wine, played again with the idea of an unknown mistress for whom he was bound across the seas with her fortune in his grip. With the insistence of youth, he had made up his mind that Melody must be a woman—what else could she be? He always saw her as a young woman, charming, beautiful, of course, and free! And yet she might well be some aged relative of Krutzmacht, or a fair friend of his youth, to whom, in the moment of decision allowed him, he had desired to leave his fortune; or some unrecognized wife, to whom, at the threshold of death, he thought to do tardy justice. “An old hag, perhaps!” the young man murmured with a grimace. “We’ll see—over there!” But his buoyant fancy refused to vision this elusive Melody as other than young and beautiful. And he gave her the attractive shape and personality of Señorita Marie. He began to think of her as living in some obscure corner of the great world, waiting to be dowered with the fortune that he had bravely rescued for her. When Brainard felt that his stomach and his sea legs were both impeccable, he descended to his cabin, bolted the door, pulled the shade carefully over the porthole, pinned newspapers above the wooden partitions, and proceeded to make a leisurely examination of the valise. It was the first safe moment that he had had to go through the contents of the bag thoroughly; and when the key sank into the lock, his curiosity was whetted to a fine edge. He had already made a careful count of the notes and gold left after his devious journey to Vera Cruz. The sum was eight thousand dollars and some hundreds. This he had entered on a blank leaf in a little diary, under the heading “Melody, Cr.” On the opposite page he had put down all the sums that he remembered to have spent since leaving New York, even to his cigarettes and the bottle of champagne which he had drunk in honor of his unknown mistress.