So they joined the procession of promenaders, and there and then cemented a friendship which ripened quickly, as friendships between the opposite sexes do at sea. The haughty salesladies of the dry-goods store had not deigned to notice the counting-house drudge, and Leonie’s piquant beauty made instant captive of one who had been deprived of the society of women for over a year. She had all the frank _camaraderie_ of the well-bred American, and her eager anticipations of the good time she was to have in Europe were infectious. In her company Beaumanoir was able to forget the dark shadow hanging over him, and to give himself up to the enjoyment of the hour. He began by being deeply grateful to her for taking him out of himself; and gratitude to a charming girl with a ravishing figure and a complexion of tinted ivory is like to have its heels trod by a warmer sentiment. Leonie, in her turn, was interested in the reserved young Englishman, who had so little to say about his doings in America, and less about his position and prospects in his native land. As he paced with his slight limp at her side or lounged with her at the rail, she tried to draw him out; but she could get nothing from him but that he had been in New York on business, and that business was taking him home. Yet, though reticent on his own affairs, he talked freely about all that concerned herself, and painted vivid word-pictures of the delights that awaited her in London. The girl, having nothing to conceal, told him freely of herself and of her plans and projects. She and her mother were going to stay with English friends in London till the end of the season, when perhaps they would run over to Paris and Rome for a month before returning to America in the autumn. Her father, Senator Sherman, was to have accompanied them; but he had been detained by public business at Washington, and was to join them a little later in London. On the fifth day of the voyage, as the _St. Paul_ was approaching the Irish coast, Leonie and Beaumanoir were sitting on deck after dinner, chatting in the twilight, when she suddenly laid her hand on his arm. "I want you to notice that man who has just gone by—the one smoking the fag-end of a cigar in a holder," she whispered, with a gesture towards the stream of passengers passing and repassing between the rows of chairs. Beaumanoir’s gaze followed her indication to an insignificant little figure in a brown covert-coat and tweed cap. "Yes. What of him?" he asked. He had not spoken to this passenger, but now that attention was called to him he had an idea that the fellow had loomed largely during the last few days. "That man is watching you, Mr. Hanbury," replied Leonie with conviction. "I wonder you haven’t observed it yourself. Whenever you are talking he hangs about trying to listen; when you are on deck he is on deck; if you go below, he goes below. If you were a fugitive from justice, and he a detective, he couldn’t shadow you more closely."