bistre enlarged eyes of a certain slim black figure, was executing the
very double shuffle which had "brought down" the second class dining
saloon honoured for the nonce by the presence of the first class, on
the occasion of one of the purgatorial concerts habitual to sea life as
known on board a liner.




CHAPTER II

Jill stood by herself!

Personally I consider as infinitely boring those descriptions written
at length anent the past lives of the characters, male and female,
which go to the building of a novel, so in as few words as possible
will try to outline the years which had brought Jill Carden to the
dreary task of waiting hand and foot upon the whimsies of a neurotic
German woman of great wealth, and still greater disinclination to part
with the smallest coin of any realm she might be travelling through.

Jill, an only child and motherless, had led a glorious care-free
existence.

Adored by her father and her two friends, Moll, otherwise the
Honourable Mary Bingham pronounced Beam, of the neighbouring estate,
and Jack, otherwise Sir John Wetherbourne, Baronet, of the next county,
big brother to Jill and worshipper at the shrine of Moll. Jill was
also loved by all who waited on her, and sought after by not a few on
account of her great wealth, and had laughed her way through seventeen