On a Thursday afternoon in the middle of July, the Merle dropped anchor behind the inner mole of Nice. In her course northward from the Straits, she had passed to the eastward of the Baleares, crossed the Gulf of Lyons, and run smoothly into harbor before the same powerful wind that had greeted her so boisterously on her entrance into the Middle Sea.

The moment when the port officer came aboard had been a nervous one, but the dapper little official had merely glanced at the yacht's papers, complimented the captain on his seamanship, and then gone ashore without a sign of suspicion.

The yacht had no sooner been made trig and ship-shape, her sails stopped with "harbor furl," the canvas covers on, the boats unlashed and swung on the davits, the running-rigging coiled down, and the details proper to coming into port attended to, than Jack, unable to put off going ashore until the morrow, gave orders for the crew to turn out in their best attire. Then with Taberman he went below to array himself for the land. In Castleport's mind the idea of calling on Mrs. Fairhew and Miss Marchfield, who he knew should now be in Nice, was paramount to all else. He would see Mrs. Fairhew, he would see Katrine, and then—well, then it would be time to consider.

Once below, Jack and Jerry began the overhauling of their wardrobes, doing their dressing half in their staterooms and half in the cabin, that they might go on with afternoon tea at the same time. During the voyage they had gone about most of the time in flannel shirts and duck trousers, the only two rules in regard to toilet having been that they should shave regularly, and that they should not come to dinner in oilers, no matter what the weather. The first rule had been framed by Jack; and Tab, as author of the second, had declared that he would rather eat hardtack in his pajamas, than a six-course dinner in his oilers. Now, as they stood in the doors of their staterooms examining their shore clothing,—each holding, like the Hatter at the trial of the Knave of Hearts, a teacup in his hand,—they had the air of being almost surprised at finding themselves in possession of so many garments, or of not knowing exactly what to do with them.

"Got any extra duck trow-trows, Jack?" asked Jerry. "We made a great mistake not shipping a laundress along with the other stores."

"Hanging them up on the rigging to dry doesn't give them an extra fine polish," Jack returned. "I have two pairs I've been saving for shore, and I suppose I can sacrifice one of them on the altar of friendship."

"That's truly noble of you," Tab said, coming over to Jack's cabin after the clean ducks; "but it's all right. When we go ashore we'll take Gonzague and a bag of things, and have some real washing done on land. What's that official-looking envelope?"

From the pocket of a coat which Castleport had thrown aside in his search for the desired garment, a long blue envelope, still sealed, had fallen to the floor. Jack pounced upon it, with an exclamation of dismay.

"Great guns!" he exclaimed. "It's Uncle Randolph's mail!"

"It's what?"

"Why," the captain explained, rummaging in the pocket from which the letter had fallen and producing a couple of others, "I told you about the boy's bringing out the letters to the Merle while she was changing crews at North Haven."

"You mean the letters the boy brought out for the President?"

"Yes, damn it!" responded the other, regarding the letters with a troubled brow. "This is a pretty kettle of fish. Uncle Randolph's letters are apt to be important, and this one has a beastly official look. It's sure to be something that couldn't wait. It's probably the thing he was looking for when he gave orders to have his mail brought out to him."

"'If not delivered in five days return to R. B. Tillington, 57 State Street, Boston,'" read Jerry over his shoulder. "Tillington's the zinc-mine man, isn't he?"

"Zinc, copper, gold,—any old thing that you can make a mining speculation out of. I think he's a slippery old fraud, but he's hand in glove with Uncle Randolph; or rather they have a lot of business together. Uncle Randolph thinks Tillington wouldn't dare to play him false, but he's an eely old beggar. Anyhow, this letter may mean the making or the losing of a fortune for all I know. Gad! Running away with his yacht is nothing to going off with his letters!"

"I don't suppose it would do to mail them here?" suggested Jerry.

"That would dish us all right," Jack answered. "It would give us away by the postmark. Uncle Randolph isn't likely to think of our coming across. He can't know we were provisioned, and he very likely thinks we are still knocking about on the other side of the Atlantic."

"He might find out about the stores by asking at the express offices and that sort of thing."

"Why should he, unless something puts the idea into his head?"

"I suppose he wouldn't," Jerry assented thoughtfully. "How would it do to return this letter to Tillington?"

"Just as bad as to send it direct to Uncle Randolph. Once let them know at home where we are, and we are done for fast enough."

"Well," Taberman said, after a brief pause in which he had apparently been summing up the situation in his mind, "the harm's done by this time, anyway; and I don't see that there's anything for us but to stick to our guns, blow high, blow low. We'll mail 'em when we get ready to go back."

Castleport regarded the letters in his hand gravely.

"I suppose there's nothing else to do," he said slowly. "The Merle is of course registered at Lloyd's, and he'd only have to cable over to have us nabbed anywhere along the whole coast."

"He may see the arrival in the shipping-lists as it is, I should think," Jerry observed rather gloomily.

"Of course; but we've got to run our chances on that. He's not very much in the habit of studying the sailing-lists as far as I know, but he may do it now. Anyway we've got to run for luck."

"The luck has been pretty good so far," was Jerry's consoling observation; "and I won't begin to distrust it now."

The result of the conversation was that the letters were put carefully away, and the two adventurers resolved not to worry about them. Castleport admitted that the matter troubled him not a little, but he was under the circumstances disposed to accept his comrade's very sensible observation that after all the letters might be of no especial importance.

"You see," Jerry said, with a laugh, as he gulped down the last of his tea, which had had time to become thoroughly cold, "we are really pirates, and here you go bringing the conscience of a gentleman into the business. None of that."

Castleport laughed, and once more their attention was given to dressing for the shore.

No one aboard understood the care and manipulation of the small steam-launch which the President used on state occasions, so they went ashore in the big cutter, with six men to pull and old Gonzague in charge.

They landed at the quays, and left Gonzague to act as interpreter and mentor to the men, while they took their way across the Quay Rosaglio and along the narrow Rue Paglione. They came out soon upon the Promenade des Anglais, thronged, in spite of the time of year, with foreigners of many nationalities. Delicate French ladies in the latest fashions from Paris, were here escorted by anÆmic gentlemen looking absurdly out of place in evening dress; vulgar Teutons in baggy trousers with impossibly dowdy wives, legitimate evolutions from generations of sauerkraut and beer; now and then an unmistakable "remittance man" from England, with puffy eye-sockets and brutal face, accompanied by the companion paid by some noble family to take charge of the prodigal till he drank himself into a dishonored grave; the British cleric, too, with the inevitable string of hopelessly dull daughters tagging after him like bobs on a kite; swarthy Roumanians or Swabians; Russians deep-eyed and surrounded by an almost palpable atmosphere of haughtiness; in a word, the cosmopolitan crowd of a fashionable promenade of Southern Europe. Through such a throng Jack and Jerry made their way toward the centre of the foreign element of the better sort, the HÔtel des Anglais.

As they reached their destination, Jack became visibly excited, and made his way to the office with an air of determination vastly amusing to his companion. He was on the point of asking for Mrs. Fairhew when he was startled by a voice behind him.

"Why, Mr. Castleport!"

Her voice! Jack spun around like a teetotum.

"Katrine—Miss Marchfield!" he cried. "How do you do? I—I— You know, I came here—this minute—I was just going to ask if you were here."

"Well," laughed the lady, whose heightened color and shining eyes were evidences of a pleasant excitement, "you see I am.—Oh, Mr. Taberman, how do you do? I'm delighted to see you."

"How are you?" responded Jerry, taking her slim hand in his own hard paw. "It's awfully jolly to see you here. How's Mrs. Fairhew? Well, I hope."

"Yes, thank you," answered Katrine. "She's never better than when she's traveling, you know."

Miss Katrine Marchfield was one of those girls who, though not beautiful, are more than pretty. She was too attractive to be fairly disposed of by being credited with mere prettiness; yet she had not fully that quality, august and indefinable, which confers upon the fortunate possessor real beauty. She was slightly above medium height, and could now, having been out for a couple of winters, carry herself exquisitely. A beautiful figure could not have been denied her by the most envious rival; and her fairly broad shoulders, always drawn well back, gave her a charming air of delicately athletic power. Her face, at first merely piquant,—perhaps from the slight arching of her eyebrows and the wholly delightful way in which she carried her head,—showed at a second glance, by the height of the forehead, the clear chiseling of the features, and the intelligent sympathy of the gray eyes, a true and sensitive nobility of nature which gave to her countenance a charm at once fine and abiding. Her eyes Jack—and for that matter a score of adoring youths—considered her greatest beauty. They were at times thoughtful, at others sparkling with vivacity. Now and then they might be surprised in a quickly vanishing expression wistful or even almost sad, as if some deeper self looked out but did not will to be seen. A mouth small, the upper lip a trifle fuller than the under; a nose almost Greek; and above the high forehead a cloud of dusky brown hair,—these physical attributes, with a sympathetic temperament and a mind sensible yet deliciously feminine, a pleasant voice and a delightful laugh, had won for Katrine Marchfield more conquests than could be boasted by many an older woman of really marked beauty.

Her relations with Jack Castleport, whether she had admitted it to herself or not, had for some time been greatly different from those she held with any one else. They had met at a dinner shortly after Katrine, for two years doubly orphaned, had come from Philadelphia to live with her widowed aunt, Mrs. Fairhew, in Boston. After meeting Katrine, Castleport had taken to calling at Mrs. Fairhew's, at first nominally to see the aunt and later frankly to see the niece. He was at this time a Junior at Harvard, and a popular man on both sides of the river; the acquaintance during his Senior year had ripened into friendship, and the most important feature of Class Day for Jack was the presence of Miss Marchfield; he had thought more of her in the audience than of the dignitaries on the platform when on Commencement Day he had taken his degree; and what with dancing with Katrine, driving with Katrine, and dreaming of Katrine for the winter which lay between Harvard and this summer, he had come to measure the uses of life chiefly as they might help to make her care for him or to reveal to him what were her feelings toward him.

For a moment or two the three Americans stood talking near the desk of the hotel. Then Miss Marchfield stepped forward and dropped into the mail-box some letters she was carrying.

"If you'll excuse me one minute," she said, "I'll send for Aunt Anne, and see about dinner. Of course you'll stay to dine?"

"Delighted," Jack said. "That is," he added, "if it's all right for us in these clothes. You see, we stupidly came off without evening togs."

"That's all right," Katrine returned; and went away smiling.

Jack looked after her with an expression which made Jerry smile.

"Gad! She's looking ten times better than when she left home," Tab said in an undertone.

"She always does," the captain responded with fervent fatuousness. "She can't help it, you know. God bless me," he added with equal fervor and absurdity, "it's worth coming over steerage just to hear her voice!"

"Well, you are hit!" commented his friend; and then, seeing a shade come over Jack's face, he laid his hand on his friend's shoulder, and added: "Don't mind my chaff, old man. I really wish you all kinds of luck."

Jack gave him a flash of sympathy and understanding, and then turned his head aside.

"Pity we haven't got evening slops," Jerry remarked, by way of changing the conversation; "but I suppose we'll do, seeing the way we came over, and all that."

"I'm not worrying about clothes," returned the captain of the Merle. "Men wear all sorts of things traveling. I'm thinking what Mrs. Fairhew'll say about our being here in the yacht without Uncle Randolph."

"What's your game if we're quizzed about the President?"

"I'm hanged if I really know," Jack returned; "but I've got to pull it through somehow, and you'll have to follow my lead."

He had time to say no more, for Katrine came forward to rejoin them, and before she had reached the friends, Mrs. Fairhew appeared.

Mrs. Fairhew was a striking woman of some forty years, of medium height, with quick and alert bearing, with the unmistakable air of a well-bred woman of the world. A widow of some six years, she still, except upon occasions of particular state, wore black,—from devotional feeling, according to her friends, and, according to the captious, because it so well became her. Between her and her niece existed a subtle and baffling likeness, but in what it consisted one would have found it well-nigh impossible to say. Of good birth, perfect breeding, and a wide social experience, she possessed also an intellect naturally good and improved by careful training; while for her rare good taste she was perhaps equally indebted to nature and to a somewhat old-fashioned training in whatever is best in the English classics. With these good gifts and graces and a perfect poise, she combined whatever is most admirable in the best type of American gentlewoman.

"Mr. Castleport," she said, giving that gentleman her hand with gracious cordiality, "this is an unexpected pleasure! How do you do, Mr. Taberman. I am very glad to see you both."

Greetings were exchanged, and then, after a moment's chatting, the men gave over their hats to an attendant, and the party went into the dining-room. On account of the season, the number of people at the hotel was comparatively small, and the huge salle À manger, with its slim pilasters and its long French windows, its tubs of palmetto and oleander, might have impressed Jack and Jerry as rather barn-like and forsaken had either been in the mood to find anything in their surroundings unsatisfactory. The four made their way to a small square table in an alcove, behind which stood a tall, round-shouldered waiter in an antediluvian dress-suit. Jack put Katrine into her chair and was placed next her, and with much pleasant talk the party began dinner.

The fish was served before any mention was made of the President. Then Jack suddenly found himself in dangerous waters, owing to a random remark from Mrs. Fairhew.

"And Mr. Drake?" she asked. "What a pity he didn't come too. I suppose he couldn't get away."

"Not on the Merle," responded Jack. "It takes a long time to cross on such a small boat."

Jerry watched his friend closely to detect signs of embarrassment, but was able to perceive nothing more than a faint flush in the brown cheeks. He recalled the captain's words about following his lead, and at this point, in his own picturesque phraseology, "shoved in his oar."

"Besides," he said glibly, with a secret mischievous glee at feeling Jack's anxious eye upon him, "it's so hard to get the President away from his everlasting bridge,—Pons Asinorum, I call it. When we left North Haven he was so absorbed in his game that he didn't even see us off."

"I didn't know he was so attached to cards," Mrs. Fairhew commented, with a smile. "As you have the yacht, Mr. Taberman, you should at least speak well of the bridge that has brought you over."

"Did Mr. Drake put you two in charge of his sailing-master, Mr. Taberman?" asked Katrine, with a suspicion of a glance at Jack, as if she meant to tease him.

"No," returned Jerrold. "Jack and I did the navigating; he's a past master, I assure you."

"Yes," rejoined Katrine, "but I should have fancied he would have had some one that was—Well, some one with a professional experience, you know."

"If the idea struck him he didn't mention it," put in Jack. "If it occurred to him after we left, I can't tell, as I haven't heard from him."

"Haven't heard from him!" exclaimed Mrs. Fairhew in mild surprise. "Haven't you been to your bankers?"

"Haven't been anywhere except at this hotel," Jack returned sturdily; and then added: "It was after bank hours when we came ashore."

"Of course you cabled him your arrival?"

"Mercy! I might have done that, mightn't I? Upon my word, it never occurred to me."

"Thoughtful of you," Katrine commented demurely.

"Well, I did get some letters ready to send to him," Jack protested, while Jerry grinned broadly.

"Got them ready! How like a man!" laughed Mrs. Fairhew. "A woman would have had them ready before she saw land, and had them mailed by the time the anchor was down."

"So did Jack have them ready," put in Jerry imperturbably.

"Then it's doubly dreadful that they are not posted," retorted Mrs. Fairhew.

Jack leaned forward and settled a pink candle-shade that threatened a conflagration, and by a comment on the inflammability of these table ornaments managed to bring the conversation into safer channels.

In the course of the talk it transpired that the ladies had no very definite plans, except that Mrs. Fairhew had determined, despite the heat of the Italian summer, to visit an old school friend, whose husband was vice-consul at Naples.

"I fancy," she said, "that we shall go straight to Genoa. I'm going to make Katrine work, and to see that she does her duty by the galleries and things,—Florence and all the Tuscan cities, you know. Then Rome and the Campagna. It will be dreadfully hard on us both, I dare say, but we shall be upheld by the proud consciousness of doing our best."

She made a little gesture of comical despair, and her niece laughed.

"It would doubtless be intolerable to either of you without the other," said Jerry in one of his boyishly elaborate attempts to be gallant.

Mrs. Fairhew regarded him with a glance well-bred though quizzical, but evidently perceived that he was completely sincere in his desire to say something agreeable, and smiled, although less broadly than Katrine, who showed in her amusement a row of beautiful teeth.

"Won't it be pretty hot in the south?" asked Jack. "I've never been in Naples in summer, nor south of Rome, in fact; but I've always been told that it is too torrid for foreigners."

"Oh, we are used to it," Mrs. Fairhew returned. "Besides, it is after all the English that have spread the stories about Italy's being so hot. They've been kept at so low a temperature all their lives by their horrid fogs that they're the greatest babies imaginable about climate."

"I fancy you're right," assented Jack. "At all events, as you are used to all climates, and as Miss Marchfield comes from Philadelphia"—

"Oh, but I've never been there in summer," Katrine broke in. "And, besides, I've lived in Boston so long that"—

"That you can stand anything?" interrupted Jerry in turn.

"I think I can," laughed Katrine.

Mrs. Fairhew toyed with her coffee-spoon thoughtfully a moment; then she looked up at Jack.

"Where are you bound, Mr. Castleport?" she asked.

"I don't know," Jack answered quite frankly. "I think we shall probably coast along—Monaco, Bordighera, and Mentone, you know; and then go to Genoa. Then perhaps we'll see Elba and Naples and Capri. After that we must start for home. Nothing is settled with us."

"I detest Monaco," Mrs. Fairhew said, with some irrelevance.

"Why?" inquired Jack, with a smile. "Does the gambling offend the Puritan that is in every Bostonian?"

"It certainly does," was the reply, "though my aversion isn't entirely a matter of conscience. I bought it on the spot for a thousand francs."

"That was awfully dear," remarked Jerry. "It would have been much cheaper to be born with it."

"As in your case?" asked the lady, raising her eyebrows a little and smiling.

"Oh, one can't inherit all the virtues!" responded Taberman with the greatest seriousness.

"Most certainly not," laughed Mrs. Fairhew. "At least I had not that good fortune."

"Nature left you one to get for yourself, because she knew you'd do it so easily," Tab said gallantly.

"Really," cried the lady, "you are evidently determined to overwhelm me, Mr. Taberman. Compliments drop from your lips like the traditional showers of pearls."

"There are frogs too in that fairy story," suggested Jack.

"Oh, Mr. Castleport," declared Katrine, coming to the rescue of Jerry, "that is simply brutal."

"Of course it's brutal," retorted Jack, willfully twisting her meaning, "but he keeps it up all the same."

Jerry tried to defend himself by charging Jack with never being able to appreciate a compliment unless he were himself the subject, and so they drifted lightly from one bit of good-natured raillery to another. Now and then a more serious note was struck, and through it all the spirit of the party was more kindly and friendly than could be pictured by any words in which they might have tried to express it.

When dinner was over, they went for a short stroll on the promenade. It naturally happened that Mrs. Fairhew walked with Taberman, and that Jack and Katrine strolled on together some little distance behind.

"You don't know," said Jack, for the fourth or fifth time that evening, but with an evident sincerity which might have excused even further repetition, "how good it is to see you again."

"Yes," Katrine responded with a carelessness too complete to be entirely genuine, "I suppose that it must be pleasant for you to see any one after being cooped up in a boat for five or six weeks."

"That's not at all what I meant," he returned pointedly, and with a little vexation.

"Perhaps not; but it's practically what you said."

"I said it gave me pleasure to see you," Jack insisted, with a daring emphasis on the final pronoun.

"Oh, a compliment!" she exclaimed, as if the thought had just struck her.

"You may take it as such," he replied rather grumpily. "It's the feminine attitude toward everything."

Katrine was silent a moment, examining with an appearance of the greatest interest the ground at her feet.

"How queer you are this evening," she said at length.

"Am I?" he retorted. "Well, I suppose if I'm only amusing into the bargain that's all that's necessary."

Another brief interval of silence intervened, and then he remarked blunderingly:—

"I suppose it makes very little difference to you whether you see any one while you're here."

"What an atrocious reflection on my efforts to be entertaining," she laughed.

"Oh," he said savagely, "that's a nice meaning to twist out of my words! You know I don't mean that."

"You seem to have some difficulty in saying what you do mean this evening," Katrine commented mockingly.

Jack laughed uneasily, with that absurdly tragic air possible only to a young man much in love.

"See here," he asked explosively, "why do you think I came over here?"

"I'm sure I can't say, Mr. Castleport," she replied, with a touch of coolness. "I never was good at riddles. Don't you think we had better catch up with Aunt Anne and Mr. Taberman?"

And greatly to his own disgust, and perhaps, could he but have known the truth, to the secret disappointment of Katrine, Jack acted upon her suggestion without a word more.

As they were taking leave of the ladies at the hotel a little later, Jerry broke out with a clumsily worded invitation that they should on the morrow go for a sail on the Merle.

"You are really very good, Mr. Taberman," Mrs. Fairhew said, "but I 'm afraid it's only half an invitation, for Mr. Castleport doesn't second it."

"I certainly do," Jack responded. "I was hesitating only because I didn't think the yacht, just in from an ocean voyage, was exactly in trim. I wasn't sure it was fair to invite you."

"I think we can put up with anything that is amiss in that line," Mrs. Fairhew answered, smiling. "What do you say, Katrine? Would you like to go?"

"Very much, Aunt Anne," her niece said, with a quick little glance at Jack, a sort of bird-twinkle of the eyes, "if we shall not be too intrusive."

"Capital!" cried Jack, whose good nature had returned, and who was anxious to make amends for his fit of pique. "I'll call for you in the morning at about noon, if that will suit you. We shall want a little time to get the yacht in trim."

"Any time after ten will do for us," Mrs. Fairhew answered. "Don't, I beg, bother too much about making things neat. I know how necessary disorder is to the real happiness of you men."