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from one to another in his courteous way; no one would break the spell of dulness which seemed to have settled down more heavily than a London fog on the ship’s company that lovely tropical evening. At last Lady May took pity on the captain’s entreaties, and after as many preliminaries as if she were beginning a lawsuit, she settled herself at the piano, took off an endless number of bracelets and bangles , and carefully transacted the performance of “Strangers Yet.” Her voice was a thin, reedy soprano, carefully trained, yet which seemed, somehow, to be of exactly the same whitey-brown complexion as her face; and when she had finished, though the audience were profuse in their thanks, no one went so far as to ask her to continue. Even Arthur Campbell, who stood leaning over the ship’s side, looking down on the smooth, glassy roll of the Indian Ocean, maintained a judicial silence. He was curiously sensitive to music in some forms, and, when once the spell began to work, he enjoyed it with all the infatuation of the opium-eater for his visionary delight; but the right word was not to be found apparently in Lady May’s electro-plated notes, and he seemed to find more music in the majestic rush of the vessel through the onyx-coloured water, as her black precipitous bows slowly swayed to