Mr. Randall sighed.  “Poor child!” he said.  “Isn’t her gayety something wonderful?  One would not think to look at her that she had ever had an hour’s sorrow; but my wife tells me that she cannot speak of that husband of hers yet without the most passionate weeping!”

“I know it!  It’s a shame,” replied Mr. Cravath, “to see a glorious woman like that throwing her life away on a memory.  I did have a hope at one time that she would marry again; but I’ve given it up.  If she would have married any one, it would have been George Walton last winter.  No one has ever come so near her as he did; but she sent him off at last, like all the rest.”

The “two fellows” on whom Mr. Cravath was counting to make up his party of eight did not appear; and on the second morning after the above conversations Steve received orders to have his boats in readiness at ten o’clock to start with the Cravath party, only six in number.

Old Ben was on the wharf as Steve was making his final arrangements.

“Wall, Steve,” he said, shifting his quid of tobacco in a leisurely manner from one side of his mouth to the other, “you’ve got a soft thing again.  You’re a damned lucky fellow, Steve; dunno whether you know it or not.”

“No, I don’t know it,” replied Steve, curtly; “and what’s more, I don’t believe in luck.”

“Don’t yer?” said Ben, reflectively.  “Wall, I do; an’ Lord knows ’t ain’t because I’ve seen so much of it.  Say, Steve,” he added, “how’d ye come to take on such a lot o’ women folks, this trip?”

“Lot o’ women folks! what d’ ye mean?” shouted Steve.  “There’s no womenkind going except one,—­Mr. Cravath’s wife; and I wish to thunder he’d left her behind.”

“Oh, is that all?” said Ben, half innocently, half mischievously,—­he was not quite sure of his ground; “be the rest on ’em goin’ to stay here?  There’s three women in the party.  Mr. Randall he’s got his wife, and there’s a widder along, too; mighty fine-lookin’ she is; aren’t nothin’ old about her, I can tell yer!”

A flash shot from Steve’s eyes.  A half-smothered ejaculation came from his lips as he turned fiercely towards Ben.

“There they be, now, all a-comin’ down the steps,” continued Ben, chuckling.  “I reckon ye got took in for onst; but it’s too late now.”

“Yes,” thought Steve, angrily, as he looked at the smiling party coming towards the landing,—­three men and three women.

“It’s too late now.  If it had been a half-hour sooner ’twould have been early enough.  But it’s the last time I’m caught in any such way.  What a blamed fool I was not to ask who they were!  Never thought of the Cravath set lumbering themselves up with women!” And a very unpromising sternness settled down on Steve’s expressive features as he stooped down to readjust some of the smaller packages in the boat.

Meantime the members of the approaching party were not wholly at ease in their minds.  Mr. Cravath had confessed his suppression of the truth, and Mr. Randall’s evident misgiving as to the success of the experiment had proved contagious.  “If he’s as queer as you say,” murmured Mrs. Cravath, “he can make it awfully disagreeable for us.  I am almost afraid to go.”