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strance. He conversed sparingly and at long intervals with a masculine friend of a similar appearance, in a melancholy high-keyed windbeaten sort of chant.

Another couple evidently belonged to a higher sphere. The husband was apparently an English tourist, self-important and wealthy; the wife a passée woman of fashion. The passengers amused Mrs. Austin immensely. “Look at that poor woman, how got up she is!” she remarked in her loud confidential whisper. “I am sure her hair is put on, and her complexion is very clever, but you can see through it. And her eyes, I do believe they are artificial, and that she takes them out of her travelling bag every morning and puts them on with her veil.” Arthur smiled guardedly and acquiesced with a man’s insincerity; in his secret thought he had a dreadful idea that the rejuvenated lady bore a certain faint uncomfortable resemblance to Mrs. Austin herself, as she might look in some very distant, disagreeable, middle-aged future.

About half-way the steamer stopped at a small clearing where a Roman Catholic mission had been established some years before. A pleasantlooking Sister, in the uniform of her religious order, with the elderly-youthful expression which