“Well, I think it is twenty minutes,” she returned smiling, “and if it isn’t I don’t care a continental.” “Women are so self-denying,” Michael Harrington observed with gentle satire. “And sometimes it pays,” his wife said. “Do you know, Nora, there was a girl on the boat who lost twelve pounds.” “Twelve pounds,” Michael exclaimed, and then by a rapid-fire bit of mental arithmetic added: “Why, that’s sixty dollars. How women do gamble nowadays!” “Pounds of flesh, Michael, pounds of flesh. She was on a diet. She didn’t eat for three days.” “That’s not a bad idea,” Nora said approvingly. “Sometime when I’m not hungry I’ll try it.” Ethel Cartwright had refrained from joining in the conversation for the reason she had no part just now in their lighter moods. Their talk of weight losing had been well enough, but Michael’s misinterpretation of the twelve pounds brought back to her the cause of Amy’s misfortune and plunged her deeper into misery. She walked toward the window and looked over the grass to the deep gloom of the cedar trees opposite. And it seemed to her that there were moving shadows that might be Taylor and his men ready to pounce upon a man to whom a year ago she had been deeply drawn. There was a charm about Denby when he set himself to please a woman to which she, although no blushing ingénue, was keenly sensible. “Seeing ghosts?” said a voice at her elbow, and she turned, startled, to see his smiling face looking down at her. She assumed a lighter air. “No,” she told him brightly. “Ghosts belong to the past. I was seeing spirits of the future.” “Can’t we see them together?” he suggested. “I shall never tire of Parisian ghosts if you are there to keep me from being too scared. Let’s go out and see if the moon looks good-tempered. The others are talking about smuggling and light and airy nothings like that. Shall we?” “No, no!” she said, with a tremor in her voice that did not escape him. “Not yet; later, perhaps.” She could, in fact, hardly compose her face. Here he was suggesting that she take him into a trap to be prepared later by her treachery. But she had what seemed to her a duty to perform, and no sentiment must stand in the way of her sister’s salvation. And there was always the hope that he was innocent. At any other time than this she would have wagered he was without blame; but this was a day on which misfortunes were visiting her, and she was filled with dread as to its outcome. She moved over to Mrs. Harrington’s side, gracefully and slowly, free so far as the ordinary observer could see from any care. “So you are talking of smuggling,” she said. “Alice, did you really bring in anything without paying duty on it?” “Not a thing,” Alice returned promptly. “I declared every solitary stitch.” “I’d like to believe you,” her husband remarked, “but knowing you as I do--” “I paid seven hundred dollars’ duty,” his spouse declared. “Disgusting!” Nora exclaimed. “Think of what you could have bought for that!”