brother's life and liberty, looked at her like this the moment before
the unsuspected revolver had flashed from the pocket of his
dress-coat and had covered the man who had suddenly declared himself
their foe. She felt her cheeks burn for a moment. There was something
magnetic, curiously troublous about his eyes and his faint smile.

"I cannot deny myself so much," he said. "Even if our opportunities
for meeting upon the steamer are few, I shall still have the pleasure
of a New York acquaintance with Miss Beverley. You need not be
afraid," he went on. "In this wonderful country of yours, the
improbable frequently happens. I have before now visited at the houses
of some whom you call your friends."

"Why not?" she asked him. "I should look upon it as the most natural
thing in the world that we were acquainted. But why do you say 'your
country'? Are you not an American?"

He looked at her with a very faint smile, a smile which had nothing in
it of pleasantness or mirth.

"I have so few secrets," he said. "The only one which I elect to keep
is the secret of my nationality."

She raised her eyebrows.

"Then you can no longer," she observed, "be considered what my brother
and I once thought you--a man of mysteries--for with your voice and
accent it is very certain that you are either English or American."

"If it affords you any further clue, then," he replied, "let me