“By George, Emmie,” the burly Yorkshireman put in, with an air of annoyance, “you are cross-questioning Dr. Cumberledge; nowt less than cross-questioning him!”

I waited a second.  “No,” I answered, slowly.  “I have not been practising of late.  I am looking about me.  I travel for enjoyment.”

That made her think better of me.  She was of the kind, indeed, who think better of a man if they believe him to be idle.

She dawdled about all day on deck chairs, herself seldom even reading; and she was eager now to drag Hilda into conversation.  Hilda resisted; she had found a volume in the library which immensely interested her.

“What are you reading, Miss Wade?” Lady Meadowcroft cried at last, quite savagely.  It made her angry to see anybody else pleased and occupied when she herself was listless.

“A delightful book!” Hilda answered.  “The Buddhist Praying Wheel, by William Simpson.”

Lady Meadowcroft took it from her and turned the pages over with a languid air.  “Looks awfully dull!” she observed, with a faint smile, at last, returning it.

“It’s charming,” Hilda retorted, glancing at one of the illustrations.  “It explains so much.  It shows one why one turns round one’s chair at cards for luck; and why, when a church is consecrated, the bishop walks three times about it sunwise.”

“Our Bishop is a dreadfully prosy old gentleman,” Lady Meadowcroft answered, gliding off at a tangent on a personality, as is the wont of her kind; “he had, oh, such a dreadful quarrel with my father over the rules of the St. Alphege Schools at Millington.”

“Indeed,” Hilda answered, turning once more to her book.  Lady Meadowcroft looked annoyed.  It would never have occurred to her that within a few weeks she was to owe her life to that very abstruse work, and what Hilda had read in it.

That afternoon, as we watched the flying fish from the ship’s side, Hilda said to me abruptly, “My chaperon is an extremely nervous woman.”

“Nervous about what?”

“About disease, chiefly.  She has the temperament that dreads infection—­and therefore catches it.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Haven’t you noticed that she often doubles her thumb under her fingers—­folds her fist across it—­so—­especially when anybody talks about anything alarming?  If the conversation happens to turn on jungle fever, or any subject like that, down goes her thumb instantly, and she clasps her fist over it with a convulsive squeeze.  At the same time, too, her face twitches.  I know what that trick means.  She’s horribly afraid of tropical diseases, though she never says so.”

“And you attach importance to her fear?”

“Of course.  I count upon it as probably our chief means of catching and fixing her.”

“As how?”

She shook her head and quizzed me.  “Wait and see.  You are a doctor; I, a trained nurse.  Before twenty-four hours, I foresee she will ask us.  She is sure to ask us, now she has learned that you are Lady Tepping’s nephew, and that I am acquainted with several of the Best People.”