as usual. It is true that the little group of army contract-seekers
and returning refugees seemed to enjoy constituting themselves into
special look-outs, and regarded it as their particular duty, as long
as it did not interfere with their game of bridge, or might cause them
to lose a particularly comfortable and sheltered corner of the deck,
to notify the stewards if they happened to see anything which to them
looked like a periscope or floating mine.

Throughout the voyage Edestone kept very much to himself and in his
quarters occupied himself constructing a new instrument, and to the
hard-rubber case that had been provided for it he attached a wireless
receiver. In some of this work he was assisted by Stanton and Black,
two electricians he had brought with him, who, with James, his valet,
made up his party.

He had little time and less inclination to observe his neighbours, who
occupied the corresponding suite just across the passageway; but his
man James, who had been formally introduced to their servants,
insisted upon telling him all about them. They were, James said, the
Duchess of Windthorst and her daughter, the Princess Wilhelmina, who
were returning from Canada, where they had been visiting the Duke of
Connaught at Toronto.

But, if Edestone was preoccupied, the Princess, on the contrary,
being a girl of nineteen, with absolutely nothing on her mind, had
not failed to note the handsome young man across the passage.
Unconsciously answering to the irresistible call of youth, which is as
loud to the princess as to the peasant, she had watched him with a
great deal of interest, and had been fascinated by his faultless boots
and the fact that he failed to notice her at all.