"Humph! I didn't see her. When did she go?"

"Since early zis morning, Monsieur," rejoined the well-recommended one
rather despondently.

Perhaps she might have gone on to say something more, but the admiral
stamped down the passageway. The maid looked on her features in the
glass much as one might inspect a barometer, drew a weak, despairing
breath, and laid herself down on the sofa again, her relaxed person
responding inertly to the steamer's vibrations.

Now, Admiral Page Paulding was as sweet-tempered an old sea-dog as
ever retired from the employ of an ungrateful country; but foggy
weather always worked a bit on his nerves--and what hands he had held
that morning in the smoke-room! As he thumped up the rubber-carpeted
staircase he knew that he was in a thoroughly bad humor, but made up
his mind to conceal it. And there were reasons. When a man has reached
the age when by all rights he should be a grandfather, and finds
himself only a foolish old-bachelor uncle personally conducting a
young niece of marriageable age and attractive exterior on her first
trip to Europe, it may well be said: "Of each day learneth he
experience." Aside from the avuncular privilege of paying bills, he
had known the jealous promptings of a father, indulged in the
self-communing suspicions of a mother, and supported smilingly the
irritations of a chaperon. The enforced companionship of a courier
maid does not lessen the perplexities of certain situations nor
lighten the burden of responsibility.

If the truth be told, the admiral's retirement, this time, from what