Miriam, whose proportions were not exactly sylph‐like, appeared slightly nettled, but the others laughed. “He is quite good‐looking,” said one of them. “Now, such a send‐off would make a good beginning for a romance. Quite sure you don’t mean to fall in love with him, Nettie? No doubt he’s poor but distinguished, or he wouldn’t be coming out to us.” Miss Harding smiled, but there was a trace of softness in her eyes, which were of a fine deep tint of blue. “I don’t think so, and there is a difficulty. I’m in love already—with the man I’m going to marry.” A girl who had not spoken nodded sympathetically, for she knew the story of Nettie Harding’s engagement to an officer of the United States navy who was far from rich. “This year—next year, Nettie?” she said. Miss Harding smiled a little. “This one’s nearly through, and I’m going to Cuba early in the next.” “Cuba can’t be a nice place just now, with the patriots and filibusters running loose all over it,” said the girl called Miriam. “What do you want to go there for?” “My father’s going. He has a good many dollars planted out there, and I fancy he is getting anxious about them. I quite often go round with him; and Julian will be away in the Bering Sea.” She rose, for a cold wind still swept the sun‐flecked Atlantic; but she spoke to Appleby at lunch, and also at dinner that evening, after which her father carried him off to the smoking‐room. There was a considerable difference between their ages and views of life, but a friendship that was free alike from patronage or presumption sprang up between them in spite of it. Cyrus Harding was an American, and what is usually termed a self‐made man, but he did not attempt to force his belief in himself and his country upon everybody else, though it was sincere enough. He was typically lean in face and frame, but his dress was as unostentatious as his speech, and he wore no diamonds, which are, indeed, not usually displayed by men of substance in his country. The little glint in his keen blue eyes, together with the formation of his mouth and chin, however, hinted that he possessed a good deal of character. Being a man who noticed everything, he was quite aware that Appleby spent at least an hour in the aggregate in his daughter’s company every day, and said nothing. Nettie was, he knew, a very capable young woman, and Appleby, he fancied, a gentleman, which was, in the meanwhile, sufficient for him. A friendship may also be made rapidly at sea, and on the seventh day out he asked Appleby a question. They were leaning on the rail together cigar in hand while the ship rolling her mastheads athwart the blue swung with an easy lurch over the long smooth heave of shining sea. “What is bringing you out to our country?” he said. Appleby laughed. “What I expect is quite the usual thing. The difficulty of getting a living in the old one.” Harding looked him over. “Army too expensive?”