So that was Violet’s line!  I surveyed the Sympathetic Intelligence with a smiling interest.

“Really, how nice!  And of course you feel quite sure that on your side you thoroughly understand—­Miss Higglesby-Browne?”

Miss Browne’s hair was rather like a clothesbrush in her mildest moods.  In her rising wrath it seemed to quiver like a lion’s mane.

“Miss Harding,” she said, in the chest-tones she reserved for critical moments, “has a nature impossible to deceive, because itself incapable of deception.  Miss Harding and I first met—­on this present plane—­in an atmosphere unusually favorable to soul-revelation.  I knew at once that here was the appointed comrade, while in Miss Harding there was the immediate recognition of a complementary spiritual force.”

“It’s perfectly true, Virginia,” exclaimed Aunt Jane, beginning to cry.  “You and Susan and everybody have always treated me as if I were a child and didn’t know what I wanted, when the fact is I always have known perfectly well!” The last words issued in a wail from the depths of her handkerchief.

“You mean, I suppose,” I exploded, “that what you have always wanted was to go off on this perfectly crazy chase after imaginary treasure!” There, now I had gone and done it.  Of course it was my red hair.

“Jane,” uttered Miss Higglesby-Browne in deep and awful tones, “do you or do you not realize how strangely prophetic were the warnings I gave you from the first—­that if you revealed our plans malignant Influences would be brought to bear?  Be strong, Jane—­cling to the Dynamic Thought!”

“I’m clinging!” sniffed Aunt Jane, dabbing away her tears.  I never saw any one get so pink about the eyes and nose at the smallest sign of weeping, and yet she is always doing it.  “Really, Virginia,” she broke out in a whimper, “it is not kind to say, I suppose, but I would just as soon you hadn’t come!  Just when I was learning to expand my individuality—­and then you come and somehow make it seem so much more difficult!”

I rose.  “Very well, Aunt Jane,” I said coldly.  “Expand all you like.  When you get to the bursting point I’ll do my best to save the pieces.  For the present I suppose I had better leave you to company so much more favorable to your soul development!” And I walked away with my head in the air.

It was so much in the air, and the deck of the Rufus Smith was so unstable, that I fell over a coil of rope and fetched up in the arms of the Honorable Cuthbert Vane.  Fortunately this occurred around the corner of the deck-house, out of sight of my aunt and Miss Browne, so the latter was unable to shed the lurid light on the episode which she doubtless would if she had seen it.  Mr. Vane stood the shock well and promptly set me on my feet.

“I say!” he exclaimed sympathetically, “not hurt, are you?  Beastly nuisance, you know, these ropes lying about—­regular man-traps, I call ’em.”