"Were you not on board that boat yesterday?" Juno inquired; and to see her look at me you might have gathered that I was suspected of sinking the vessel.

"A most delightful occasion!" I exclaimed, filling my face with a bright blankness.

"Isn't he awful to speak that way about Sunday!" said the up-country bride.

This was a chance for the poetess, and she took it. "To me," she mused, "every day seems fraught with an equal holiness."

"But I should think," observed the Briton, "that you could knock off a hymn better on Sundays."

All this while Juno was looking at me, and I knew it, and therefore I ate my food in a kindly sort of unconscious way, until she fired another shot at me. "There is an absurd report that somebody fell overboard."

"Dear me!" I laughed. "So that is what it has grown to already! I did go out on the boat boom, and I did drop off—but into a boat."

At this confession of mine the up-country bride became extraordinarily arch on the subject of the well-known hospitality of steam yachts, and for this I was honestly grateful to her; but Juno brooded still. "I hope there is nothing wrong," she said solemnly.

Feeling that silence at this point would not be golden, I went into it with spirit I told them of our charming party, of General Rieppe's rich store of quotations, of the strict discipline on board the well-appointed Hermana, of the great beauty of Hortense, and her evident happiness when her lover was by her side. This talk of mine turned off any curiosity or suspicion which the rest of the company may have begun to entertain; but upon Juno I think it made scant impression, save causing her to set me down as an imbecile. For there was Doctor Beaugarcon when we came into the sitting-room, who told us before any one could even say "How-do-you-do," that Miss Hortense Rieppe had broken her engagement with John Mayrant, and that he had it from Mrs. Cornerly, whom he was visiting professionally. I caught the pitying look which Juno threw at me at this news, and I was happy to have acquitted myself so creditably in the manipulation of my secret: nobody asked me any more questions!