“I think you were hard on him. A man can’t help his mother stealing his trousers.” “No. But when he finds they’re gone, he can ’phone to the tailor for some more or borrow the janitor’s or do _something_. But he simply stayed where he was and didn’t do a thing. Just because he was too much afraid of his mother to tell her straight out that he meant to be married that day.” “Now that,” said Miss Hubbard, “is just the sort of trait in a man which would appeal to me. I like a nervous, shrinking man.” “I don’t. Besides, it made him seem so ridiculous, and—I don’t know why it is—I can’t forgive a man for looking ridiculous. Thank goodness, my darling Sam couldn’t look ridiculous, even if he tried. He’s wonderful, Jane. He reminds me of a knight of the Round Table. You ought to see his eyes flash.” Miss Hubbard got up and stretched herself with a yawn. “Well, I’ll be on the promenade deck after breakfast to-morrow. If you can arrange to have him flash his eyes then—say between nine-thirty and ten—I shall be delighted to watch them.” CHAPTER V. PERSECUTION OF EUSTACE “Good God!” cried Eustace Hignett. He stared at the figure which loomed above him in the fading light which came through the porthole of the state-room. The hour was seven-thirty, and he had just woken from a troubled doze, full of strange nightmares, and for the moment he thought that he must still be dreaming, for the figure before him could have walked straight into any nightmare and no questions asked. Then suddenly he became aware that it was his cousin, Samuel Marlowe. As in the historic case of father in the pigstye, he could tell him by his hat. But why was he looking like that? Was it simply some trick of the uncertain light, or was his face really black and had his mouth suddenly grown to six times its normal size and become a vivid crimson? Sam turned. He had been looking at himself in the mirror with a satisfaction which, to the casual observer, his appearance would not have seemed to justify. Hignett had not been suffering from a delusion. His cousin’s face was black; and, even as he turned, he gave it a dab with a piece of burnt cork and made it blacker. “Hullo! You awake?” he said, and switched on the light. Eustace Hignett shied like a startled horse. His friend’s profile, seen dimly, had been disconcerting enough. Full face, he was a revolting object. Nothing that Eustace Hignett had encountered in his recent dreams—and they had included such unusual fauna as elephants in top hats and running shorts—had affected him so profoundly. Sam’s appearance smote him like a blow. It seemed to take him straight into a different and a dreadful world. “What ... what ... what...?” he gurgled. Sam squinted at himself in the glass and added a touch of black to his nose. “How do I look?”