From over the wide world these people seemed to be drifting together like leaves upon a pond--borne hither and thither by some unseen current, swirled suddenly by a passing breath--at the mercy of wind and weather and chance, each occupied in his or her small daily life, looking no further ahead than the next day or the next week. And yet they were drifting surely and steadily towards each other, driven by the undercurrent of Fate, against which the strongest will may beat itself in vain. CHAPTER IV. FOR THE HIGHEST BIDDER. Let thine eyes look right on. "How handsome Fitz looks in his uniform!" Mrs. Ingham-Baker said, with that touch of nervous apprehension which usually affected all original remarks addressed by her to Mrs. Harrington. Mrs. Ingham-Baker had been to Malta and back, but the wonders of the deep had failed to make a wiser woman of her. If one wishes to gain anything by seeing the world, it is best to go and look at it early in life. "Yes," answered Mrs. Harrington, with a glance in the direction of Agatha, the only other occupant of the drawing-room--"yes; he is a good-looking young fellow." Agatha was reading the Globe, sitting upright and stiff, for she was wearing a new ball-dress. "I think," went on Mrs. Ingham-Baker volubly, "that I have never seen a naval uniform before--in a room close at hand, you know. Of course, on board the Croonah the officers wore a sort of uniform, but they had not a sword." Agatha turned over her newspaper impatiently. Mrs. Harrington was listening with an air of the keenest interest, which might have been sarcastic. "Poor Luke had not quite so much gold braid--" Agatha looked up, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker collapsed. "I should think," she added, after some nervous shufflings in her seat, "that a sword is a great nuisance. Should you not think so, Marion dear?" "I do not know," replied Mrs. Harrington; "I never wore one." Mrs. Ingham-Baker laughed eagerly at herself, after the manner of persons who cannot afford to keep up a decent self-respect. "But I always rather think," she went on, with an apprehensive glance towards her daughter, "that a sword is out of place in a drawing-room, or--or anywhere where there are carpets, you know." "I thought you had never seen one before," put in Agatha, without looking up from her newspaper. "In a room--close at hand, you know." "No--no, of course not; but I knew, dear, that they were worn. Of course, in warfare it is different." "In warfare," said Mrs. Harrington patiently, "they are usually supposed to come in rather handy." "Yes--he-he!" acquiesced Mrs. Ingham-Baker, adjusting a bracelet on her arm with something approaching complacency. She thought she began to see daylight through the conversational maze in which--with the best intentions--she had involved herself. "But I was only thinking that for a lady's drawing-room I think I like Luke's quiet black clothes just as much."