Jean wondered if there were a touch of sarcasm in this reply, but his face was impenetrable.

"Charming accent he has," smiled Eleanor in an aside to Nan.

"I wonder where he got it, don't you?"

"Have you lived very much abroad, Mr. Farr?" queried Eleanor, turning politely to him.

"And why do you ask?"

"Why, your accent is so un-American."

A broad smile crossed Dudley's face as he caught Miss Hill's words. It amused him not a little to hear reticent Farr thus catechized.

"Where are you from?" asked Nathalie, coming to the front in her usual outspoken fashion.

Farr glanced at her, and then, after an instant's hesitation, answered languidly.

"From New Jersey."

At this the little group, throwing manners to the winds, burst into merry laughter.

"Doesn't look a bit like a mosquito," said Nan to Mollie in an audible whisper.

Poor Mollie looked quite horror-struck, for she 44 felt sure that the saucy words had reached Farr's ear.

44

If the man felt any annoyance he was most successful in concealing it, for his expression remained quite unchanged. Not so with poor Jean, who had flushed hotly at what she considered Nan's unwarrantable impertinence. She made a swift, angry little movement, and the book she had been holding slipped to the deck. Farr leaned forward, and picked it up. As he returned it to her his eyes met hers with a quiet, reassuring smile, for he had been quick to notice the girl's silent championship, and it had greatly touched him. The color in Jean's face deepened, and with sudden shyness she dropped her eyes.

"Have a cigar, Farr?"

To these two Clifford Archer's question came almost like an interruption, although no word had been spoken between them.

"No, thanks," taking from his pocket a 

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