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Galstin. "Until this moment I did not know that I was not. Mr. Stewart changes his plans and those of others very rapidly."
"My dear Darya, don't you worry. No one knows better than you that I am the sport of circumstances. Anyhow, Miss Fraser, you will occupy the berth which was taken for Miss Galstin. If the cabin reserved for Mr. Peters is also occupied he will be the object of attention; no one will give a moment's thought to anyone else. So you see that is one reason why Mr. Beck with should travel as well as you. You'll be strangers to each other; the firstclass passenger will know nothing about the girl in the second. Then, also, I have a sort of feeling that it will do Mr. Beckwith no harm to get a trip across the water, and another five hundred pounds won't hurt either of you. Have you any objection, Miss Fraser, to my making the prize five thousand dollars?"
"That's equivalent to a thousand pounds. I've not the slightest objection to your doing that. At the same time one cannot help wondering how much those 'pills' of yours I understand that there are twenty-two--"
"You understand correctly; that's the number."
"are worth, and what the service you require really means, when without a moment's hesitation you pass from five hundred pounds to a thousand, as if the difference between the two amounts didn't matter in the least."
Mr. Stewart waited some seconds before he answered; he seemed to be summing Catherine up. The whimsical smile which was on his face as he observed her seemed to be a cover to a great note of interrogation. One felt that he was asking himself questions to which he was seeking to find answers as he looked at her.
"Miss Fraser," he said at last, "there's one thing I'm not paying you for curiosity. I'm not so simple as to suppose I can prevent your being curious, but please be as little as you can at my expense. I am just asking you to be a messenger, that's all. When a messenger in a department store is asked to take a parcel to a customer, he's
