In due course Fitz was presented to the Ingham-Bakers, and Agatha was very gracious. Fitz looked at her a good deal. Simply because she made him. She directed all her conversation and eke her bright eyes in his direction. He listened, and when necessary he laughed a jolly resounding laugh. How could she tell that he was drawing comparisons all the while? It is the simple-minded men who puzzle women most. Whenever Luke's face clouded she swept away the gathering gloom with some small familiar attention--some reference to him in her conversation with Fitz which somehow brought him nearer and set Fitz further off. Suddenly, on hearing that Fitz hoped to be in England within a week, Mrs. Ingham-Baker fell heavily into conversation. "I am afraid," she said, "that you will find our dear Mrs. Harrington more difficult to get on with than ever. In fact--he, he!--I almost feel inclined to advise you not to try. But I suppose you will not be much in London?" Fitz looked at her with clear, keen blue eyes. "I expect to be there some time," he answered. "I hope to stay with Mrs. Harrington." Mrs. Ingham-Baker glanced at Agatha, and returned somewhat hastily to her galantine of veal. Agatha was drumming on the table with her fingers. CHAPTER XII. A SHUFFLE. To love is good, no doubt, but you love best A calm safe life, with wealth and ease and rest. The Croonah ran round Europa Point into fine weather, and the wise old captain--who felt the pulse of the saloon with unerring touch--deemed it expedient to pin upon the board the notice of a ball to be given on the following night. There was considerable worldly knowledge in this proceeding. The passengers still had the air of Europe in their lungs, the energy of Europe in their limbs. Nothing pulls a ship full of people together so effectually as a ball. Nothing gives such absorbing employment to the female mind which would otherwise get into hopeless mischief. Besides they had been at sea five days, and the captain knew that more than one ingenuous maiden, sitting in thoughtful idleness about the decks, was lost in vague forebodings as to the creases in her dresses ruthlessly packed away in the hold. The passengers were, in fact, finding their sea-legs, which, from the captain's point of view, meant that the inner men and the outer women would now require and receive a daily increasing attention. So he said a word to the head cook, and to the fourth officer he muttered-- "Let the women have their trunks!" When, on the evening of the ball, Agatha appeared at the door of her mother's cabin, that good lady's face fell. "What, dear? Your old black!"