"Everywhere! And I beg ten thousand pardons for my seeming desertion of you. It was wholly an accident, and the fault of my friend, who detained me talking one minute too long. I followed you on the next steamer, but it was several hours late, and all the time my mind was distracted over what would become of you. Of course I knew you would find friends--a beautiful girl alone in a crowd will always find a protector; but," sneeringly, "not always a safe one!" "I beg your pardon. It was I who protected Miss Harding," began Harry Hawthorne, wrathfully, and the girl started, and exclaimed: "Mr. Standish, this is Mr. Hawthorne, a very kind gentleman who paid my fare on the boat after you left me without a ticket, and afterward jumped into the river and saved my life when I fell overboard. I owe him a debt of gratitude that I can never repay." They bowed coldly, trying not to glare, each seeing in the other a dangerous rival. Clifford Standish was not pleasant to look at with that steely glare in his large, light-blue eyes, and that angry compression of his shaven lips as he said, coldly: "I thank you, sir, for your care of my friend during my enforced absence from her side. I will repay you the boat fare, and remain deeply indebted to you for saving her life. Of course it goes without saying that I shall now be honored with her company again, thus relieving you of her care." Harry Hawthorne, with a dangerous flash in his dark-blue eyes, retorted, calmly: "I beg your pardon. Her engagement with me for this evening gives me a right that I shall not relinquish unless at her desire." Both looked at the beautiful, flushed face of the girl. She comprehended the sudden hate between them, and said, tremblingly, but with the sweet tones of the peacemaker: "I think Mr. Hawthorne is right. My engagement with you was for to-day, and we were to have returned to-night, you know. But after you left me alone on the boat, I made new friends, and a very sweet, kind lady, well-known to Mr. Hawthorne, took charge of me and invited me to be her guest while I staid in Newburgh. It was under her chaperonage I came to the ball, and, with her consent, I accepted the escort of Mr. Hawthorne. I cannot break my engagement with him, and I have promised, also, to go back to New York in his care to-morrow." Every word she uttered maddened him with secret fury. His face was livid as he almost hissed: "I should like to see this lady who chaperoned you here. How do I know that she is a proper person!" he began, insolently, but at that moment a lady tapped him smartly on the arm with her fan, exclaiming: "Ha, ha, ha! I like that, Mr. Standish! A proper person indeed. Well, I'm the person, and if you have any fault to find with me, my husband, Captain Stansbury, will settle it with you." "Miss Odell!" he exclaimed, recoiling in surprise from the sight of the face of an old acquaintance.