Here was that "Mr. Ferris," whom the young lady of the grocery had coyly
saluted; the "Beany," whom the pale young editor had bluntly bidden to
leave town; and the literary celebrity whom Miss Mary Carstairs so
evidently and so warmly admired. Varney stared at the portrait with a
kind of fascination. Now he saw many points of difference between the
face of "the popular author" and his own. The resemblance was only
general, after all. Still it was undoubtedly strong enough to warrant
all kinds of mistakes.

What a very extraordinary sort of thing to have happen!

Suddenly his eye fell upon a penciled line in the white margin above the
picture which had at first escaped him:

"On no account leave the yacht till I come back. Vitally important."

Varney pitched the magazine across the deck with an irritated laugh.
Peter--utterly ignorant of how matters stood--attempting to fire off
long-distance orders and direct his movements. The splendid gall!

As it chanced, he had no occasion to leave the yacht, either before or
after Peter got back. His work was done. He made himself comfortable
with morning papers and a novel--not one of Mr. Stanhope's--and began to
seek beguilement.

But his reading went forward rather fitfully. There were long intervals
when his book, "eleventh printing" though it was, slipped forgotten to
his knees, and he sat staring thoughtfully over the sunny water....