reaffirmed his

agreement, and hastily took

As Honiton approached, Jocelyn met him with a happy mischievous smile. This morning, the first after her betrothal, she was as gaily happy as the previous evening she had been seriously and intensely so. Everything in her world was right: her lover was by her side, and her wits sparkled freely, intoxicated by pure joy in her existence.

Corris's revelation did not affect her spirits, for she simply refused to believe it. Peter Brown could not be such a man. Still, the subject was as suitable as any other with which to tease Frank fondly.

"Frank, you are discovered," she began, with mock solemnity, as Honiton seated himself by her side. "I know all about Oxterham the jewel-thief!"

All trace of colour left Honiton's face. His eyes stared horror-struck. The exposure was so unexpected.

At the instant Jocelyn realised that the Honourable Stephen Corris had deduced aright.

"Oh !" she gasped, her heart filled with disappointment and pain, "so it is true after all! I couldn't believe it. I liked him so much that I didn't dream it could be true. Are you really sure he is guilty, Frank? May it not be all a

mistake? I can't think I am wrong about him!"

Reluctance to believe her judgment amiss was mingled with genuine sorrow that one towards whom she had felt so sincerely drawn should turn out a rogue.

Honiton, meanwhile, had recovered from the first shock of her bald announcement, and had quickly drawn the right conclusion from her words. His heart beat more steadily as he realised that she thought he was the detective. Even a moment's respite from the truth was something. On the other hand, if she was so shocked at the discovery of the guilt of a casual acquaintance, what would be the effectwould not bear thinking of. He closed his mind to everything except the instinctive effort to postpone the catastrophe.

It

"How did you know? How did the news get aboard!" he asked unsteadily.

Jocelyn looked at him in surprise at the harshness of his voice, and she recollected the wild expression with which he had greeted the fact that she knew.

"Frank! You don't think I mind you being a detective! " she asked, with a faint sweet smile at the absurdity of the

lay in the very truth of the words cut him like a knifethrust.

"Do you really think there is any hope of that?" asked the girl eagerly.

"I do," answered Honiton, finding a certain appeasement to the torment of his conscience in painting his victim a lighter shade of black.

The momentary alleviation urged him further.

"You must not think of him as guilty. How could I have let him come amongst people like you if I had known that he was the man?"

But already the momentary relief was gone, and his agony was greater than before. He had committed himself to the definite lie. He saw himself a meaner hound than he had yet realised.

Conscience is often lacking in a sense of proportion. The idea that he had gone back on Peter Brown that he was slandering the man who had been so good to him-loomed for the moment larger in his mind than his deception of Jocelyn. It was so unsportsmanlike.

"Then I'll still try to think him innocent," said Jocelyn. "But that won't help me with Mr Corris. He won't look on the best side, I'm sure, and he'll tell everybody. He's a horrid little gossip."

"Let me speak to him for you," Honiton suggested, with some idea of finding a way out for himself. Perhaps I can choke him off."

66

"No, dear; I made a bargain with him, and I can't go back on it. I'll try to appeal to his better nature, but only as a matter of form, because I don't believe he has any— Let's try to forget horrid things now, Frank, and talk about you. I think I shall just love you being a detective, when I get used to the idea. It seems too absurd at first, you know. You don't look the part a bit, and somehow I never imagined a detective as being jolly."

A less suitable adjective to apply to to Honiton at that moment would be hard to find. A more miserable man could not exist, yet he had to make a show of entering into Jocelyn's mood, and strive by a barrier of banter to hold off the unconscious attack that lay in her eager interest.

The Honourable Stephen Corris, meanwhile, suffered from the fidgets. He itched to spread his sensational news, and only the fact that by waiting he would be able to speak with greater authority prevented him from breaking the bargain he had made with Jocelyn. He hovered on and off the deck, his prying little eyes watching greedily for the end of the conversation that was in progress, ready to pounce upon Jocelyn the first moment she was alone.

He was kept on tenterhooks for a considerable time, for Jocelyn was full of interest in her lover's supposed profes

was to elude her questions, he could not readily escape. It was Corris himself who at last formed his excuse. His spying had not passed unnoticed by Honiton, though Jocelyn was so much wrapped up in her love and her happiness that his frequent passing and repassing escaped her notice.

"I think we ought to relieve our friend's anxiety," said Honiton. "If you won't let me speak to him on your behalf, I'll leave you now and you can get it over."

"You mean Mr Corris?" said Jocelyn. "I am so full of you, Frank dear, that I am afraid I forgot all about him. I believe you are a very thoughtful person, Frank thoughtful of others, I mean."

She touched his freckled hand caressingly, and smiled at him with her whole heart in her eyes.

"Run away, then, like a good boy," she went on. "I'll keep my word to Mr Corris."

The Honourable Stephen watched Honiton disappear down the companion, and came forward eagerly.

"I was right, eh" he asked, as he took the vacant chair.

Jocelyn experienced a sudden distaste for his proximity. She felt herself enveloped in an atmosphere of meanness, as though the Honourable Stephen moved in an exhalation of his own personality.

"I am sorry to say you were," she said coldly. "That

Brown is travelling home under arrest. He hasn't been convicted of anything, and one must assume that he is innocent."

Corris giggled sceptically.

"They don't often make mistakes. If Brown is Oxterham, he's booked for five years at least."

"If he is Oxterham," retorted Jocelyn. "But don't you see, that is just what has to be proved? It may be a case of mistaken identity. Indeed, Mr Honiton admits that himself. I think it would be most unfair to spread this story about, Mr Corris. We should agree to make it a secret between us."

She hated the idea of there being anything confidential between such a contemptible creature as Corris and herself, but she had made herself the champion of Peter Brown, and was prepared to play the part wholeheartedly.

"Is it fair to the other passengers not to warn them?" said Corris plausibly. "See what has happened already. If there are any more thefts, I should be to blame if I had kept this dark."

"But how ridiculous, Mr Corris!" replied Jocelyn. "Why should a man, already under arrest, take such a risk? It could do him no good, and only make his position infinitely worse."

"Just what a clever thief like Oxterham would count on every one thinking," retorted

it remain a secret between us."

"It can't be done, Miss Upton. I have a duty to the other passengers that my conscience insists on me performing."

The Honourable Stephen seemed to swell with pride at his own virtue, and Jocelyn, who knew instinctively that his true motive was mere love of scandal, longed to strike him with her open hand.

"I suppose there is nothing more to be said," she added bitterly. "Your conscience will make you go to the captain, and this poor man, who is already in great trouble-perhaps innocently-will have the additional disgrace of being searched and humiliated before the whole ship."

Corris had not thought of taking his news to Captain Spedley. Now that he did, the idea did not appeal to him. Once in the captain's hands the affair would be out of his own control. He preferred to hug the scandalous story to him

"I didn't say I wanted to make the thing public, Miss Upton," he said ingratiatingly. "There's no need for any official interference when the man is already in Honiton's charge, but I do think it is my duty to warn the passengers privately what sort of a man they are mixing with."

"Have it your own way," said Jocelyn coldly. "But if your conscience is so very tender, I hope it will make you remember to say that Mr Brown is under arrest-not convicted -and that he has every right to be treated as an innocent man."

"It's at least a hundred to one on that he spends his next five years at least in quod," retorted the Honourable Stephen viciously, stung by her obvious contempt for him. "From all I remember of the case he'll get twenty years, and deserve every day of it."

Jocelyn rose and left him in mingled anger and disgust. Deliberately she walked along the deck to where the unconscious subject of the conversation sat in solitude with a book, and took a vacant chair by his side.

She entered into light talk with the unfortunate Peter Brown, and her merry laughter reached the ears of the Honourable Stephen Corris as an open defiance.