Suddenly she turned and saw me. “Coo-ooh!” she called. “Have you come to take me to tea?” “Yes,” I replied, walking down to her. “What has become of everybody?” “I don’t know,” said Nanette. “I wanted to be alone.” “To think?” “I suppose so.” I dropped on to the stone seat beside her. “Whom did you want to think about, Nanette?” She lowered her lashes, and polished busily. “Oh--Pop and Mum--and folks.” I lighted a cigarette, and presently she looked up. Her clear eyes regarded me wistfully for a moment, and: “You know,” she said. “Don’t you?” “I am afraid I do, Nanette,” I confessed. “Isn’t it strange,” she went on, staring away over the sea, “that I should be so crazy about someone who avoids me?” “Very strange,” I answered dully. When a girl thus makes a confidant of a man she has never kissed, if he knows the rules of the game he retires hurt. Then: “I suppose I shall get over it,” she said, and smilingly packed up the manicure implements. “We have to be on board at a fiendishly early hour to-morrow. I don’t know whether to go to bed at nine o’clock or sit up all night. Let’s have tea.” As I helped her out of the cushioned chair: “I have some news for you, Nanette,” I said. “Major O’Shea is coming with us.” Her eyes opened very widely; and she stared at me in a frightened way that I always associated with any sudden reference to O’Shea. Then she turned swiftly, taking up her parasol. “Really,” she said. “How often he changes his mind.” But as we walked up the long path to the terrace she talked animatedly. And glancing aside at her flushed face, I realized with almost a shock of surprise how very young she was--and how sweetly incapable of hiding the excitement that my news had created. CHAPTER XVIII. SUSPECTS That run home to Southampton did not begin auspiciously for Nanette. Her happiness at being on the same ship with O’Shea was distinctly blunted by the presence of an official chaperone. Her father had some sort of pull with the line, and by dint of industrious cabling, he had contrived to get in touch with a lady he knew who was returning from South Africa: One Mrs. Porter, a really formidable matron, deep-chested, heavy-jowled, and contemplating a sinful world through spectacles of an unnecessarily unpleasant pattern. “Pop is mad!” said Nanette. “This woman must die.” Excluding O’Shea and myself, Nanette had come on board with a male escort of three devoted dancing partners. Lacking the society of Nanette, these were three very lonely young men, divided by a mutual distrust but united in their dislike of O’Shea. Unreciprocated passion renders its victims clairvoyant; and each one of these three knew what the rest of the crowd at Reid’s Hotel had never suspected: that Nanette only emerged from a land of dreams when O’Shea was with her. Now, to crown a troublous situation, Mrs. Porter presented a protégé--Captain Slattery. She made it pointedly clear that no other follower would be tolerated.