He told her that he had learned that the yacht Water Nymph would put in to Leith before crossing the North Sea, and that he had written to Herbert Courtland at that port to return without delay.

“You did wrong,” said she; and she felt that she was speaking the truth.

“I don’t think so,” he replied.  “At any rate, you may rest perfectly certain that Herbert will receive my letter with gratitude.”

And Mr. Linton’s judgment on this point was not in error.  Herbert Courtland received, on the evening of the third day after leaving Southampton, the letter which called him back to London, and he contrived to conceal whatever emotion he may have felt at the prospect of parting from his shipmates.  They accompanied him ashore, however—­they had worn out six packs of cards already, and were about to buy another dozen or two, to see them safely through the imposing scenery of the Hardanger Fjord.

The next day he was in London, and it was on the evening of that same day that he came face to face with the Rev. George Holland outside Miss Ayrton’s drawing room.

CHAPTER XXV.

LIES!  LIES!  LIES!

“You should have come a little sooner,” said Phyllis quite pleasantly.  “Mr. Courtland was giving me such an amusing account of his latest voyage.  Will you have tea or iced coffee?”

“Tea, if you please,” said George Holland, also quite pleasantly.  “Has Mr. Courtland been on another voyage of discovery?  What has he left himself to discover in the world of waters?”

“I think that what he discovered on his latest voyage was the effect of a banjo on the human mind,” laughed Phyllis.  “He was aboard Lord Earlscourt’s yacht, the Water Nymph.  Some other men were there also.  One of them had an idea that he could play upon the banjo.  He was wrong, Mr. Courtland thinks.”

“A good many people are subject to curious notions of the same type.  They usually take an optimistic view of the susceptibilities of enjoyment of their neighbors—­not that there is any connection between enjoyment and a banjo.”

“Mr. Courtland said just now that when Dr. Johnson gave it as his opinion that music was, of all noises, the least disagreeable, the banjo had not been invented.”

“That assumes that there is some connection between music and the banjo, and that’s going just a little too far, don’t you think?”

“I should like to hear Dr. Johnson’s criticism of Paderewski.”

“His criticism of Signor Piozzi is extant:  a fine piece of eighteenth century directness.”

“I sometimes long for an hour or two of the eighteenth century.  You remember Fanny Burney’s reference to the gentleman who thought it preposterous that Reynolds should have increased his price for a portrait to thirty guineas, though he admitted that Reynolds was a good enough sort of man for a painter.  I think I should like to have an hour with that man.”