me any more with that witch’s tongue.”  Was ever millionaire in such manner wooed?  Was ever millionaire in such fashion won?  The gipsy’s eyes glowed, and her heart heat in triumph.  Was this the Diana of Ferrier’s imagination?  Was this the queen of whom that athletic young gentleman was silently dreaming as he swung over the pulsing mountains of the North Sea?  This slyboots!  This most infantile coax!

I wish some half-dozen of the most charming young ladies in England would only begin coaxing, and coax to as good purpose!  I would go out next summer and willingly end my days in work on the water, if I thought my adorable readers would only take Marion Dearsley’s hint, and help to blot out a little misery and pain from this bestained world.

While Mr. Cassall was standing, with his teacup, before the glowing wood fire, he said, “Be my secretary for half an hour, Molly, my pet.  Write and ask Blair, and that other whom I don’t know—­Fullerton.  Yes; ask them to dinner.  And, let me see, you can’t ask Mr. Phoenix the Sawbones?”

“Who, uncle?” “Why, the young doctor that performs such prodigies, of course.”

“He’s out on the sea now, dear, and I expect that he’s in some abominable cabin—­”

“Catching smallpox to infect cleanly people with?”

“No, dear.  He is most likely tending some helpless tatterdemalion, and moving about like a clever nurse.  He is strong—­so strong.  He pulled a man through a wave with one hand while he held the rigging with the other, and the man told me that it was enough to tear the strongest man to pieces”

“Here, stop the catalogue.  Why, Sawbones must be Phoebus Apollo!  If you talk much more I shall ask him a question or two.  Go on with your secretary’s duties, you naughty girl.”

So ended the enslavement of Robert Cassall, and so, I hope, began his immortality.  Oh!  Marion Dearsley; sweet English lady.  This is what you were turning over in your maiden meditations out at sea.  Demure, deep, delicious plotter.  What a coup!  All the mischievous North Sea shall be jocund for this, before long.  Surely they must name one vessel after you!  You are a bloodless Judith, and you have enchanted a perfectly blameless Holofernes.  I, your laureate, have no special song to give you just now, but I think much of you, for the sake of darkened fishers, if not for your own.

Mr. Cassall invited Sir James Roche to meet the other men.  Sir James was the millionaire’s physician and friend, and Cassall valued all his judgments highly, for he saw in the fashionable doctor a money-maker as shrewd as himself; and, moreover, he had far too much of the insular Briton about him to undervalue the kind of prestige which attaches to one who associates with royal personages and breathes the sacred atmosphere of money.  Sir James was an apple-faced old gentleman, who had been a miser over his stock of health and strength.  He was consequently ruddy, buoyant,