"It's absurd!" argued Leah, artfully. "Jim was quite well till he caught that stupid cold at Firmingham. Why should he go off suddenly?" "What they call galloping consumption is----" "I can't believe it. Nothing would surprise me more than to hear of Jim's death"; and she soothed her conscience with the reflection that this speech was perfectly true, considering Jim had the strength of a bull and the appetite of a shark. "If I lose him----" "You won't lose him. I'll send a cable to Demetrius, and if Jim is really so sick, I'll go out and nurse him." Pentland's face lighted up, and he pressed her hand. "How good of you, my dear! It will ease my mind; but--" he hesitated--"I never thought you cared enough about Jim to inconvenience yourself." "Jim has given me very little reason to care for him," said Leah, with some bitterness. "If he had been a better husband, I should have been a different woman"; she used the stale argument tactfully and regretfully. "Yes--er--I'm afraid that's true," said the Duke, recalling his son's peccability; "but he is so ill. Forgive and forget, Leah." "For your sake, if not for Jim's," she said gracefully. "I'll send the cable this very night." And she did. When Pentland, overflowing with outspoken approbation of her correct conduct, took his leave, she went to her desk and hunted out a cypher with which Demetrius had supplied her. It would not do to let the postal authorities know of their schemes, and the cypher was a particularly intricate one. Leah spent an hour in concocting her cablegram, and was late for dinner in consequence. But she had a good appetite, all the same, in spite of the bad food and the dull conversation. For, on their way to Kingston, Jamaica, were a few lines in cypher, a translation of which would have been of great interest to the father-in-law, who thought her so womanly and good. "Duke wants me to nurse Jim," ran the cypher, when Demetrius used the key. "Wire that there is no need." If Jim had really been dying, she would not have altered a single word. CHAPTER XVIII An urchin throws a stone into the horse-pond. Circles; form, not only in the still water, but in the fluent air, to enring invisibly our sphere. And who can say to what limit they recede, if limit there be? So with a carelessly selected, hastily flung word. Had Lady Jim said _your_ future, Askew, assuming no coupling, would have grumbled himself back into tame-catism and canine contentment with casual head-pats. But, _our_ future! The pronoun bulked portentous. Its three letters encompassed, to the lover's prolific imagination--divorce, remarriage, a life-long duet and amorous communings in the highest paradise attainable by those yet moving in time.