He was holding the handkerchief in his hand.  “This is the first morning I have seen you at breakfast.  I accepted it for granted you must have slept well.  Is this yours, Miss Standish?”

He watched her face as she took the crumpled bit of cambric from his fingers.  In a moment she was smiling.  The smile was not forced.  It was the quick response to a feminine instinct of pleasure, and he was disappointed not to catch in her face a betrayal of embarrassment.

“It is my handkerchief, Mr. Holt.  Where did you find it?”

“In front of my cabin door a little after midnight.”

He was almost brutal in the definiteness of detail.  He expected some kind of result.  But there was none, except that the smile remained on her lips a moment longer, and there was a laughing flash back in the clear depths of her eyes.  Her level glance was as innocent as a child’s and as he looked at her, he thought of a child—­a most beautiful child—­and so utterly did he feel the discomfiture of his mental analysis of her that he rose to his feet with a frigid bow.

“I thank you, Mr. Holt,” she said.  “You can imagine my sense of obligation when I tell you I have only three handkerchiefs aboard the ship with me.  And this is my favorite.”

She busied herself with the breakfast card, and as Alan left, he heard her give the waiter an order for fruit and cereal.  His blood was hot, but the flush of it did not show in his face.  He felt the uncomfortable sensation of her eyes following him as he stalked through the door.  He did not look back.  Something was wrong with him, and he knew it.  This chit of a girl with her smooth hair and clear eyes had thrown a grain of dust into the satisfactory mechanism of his normal self, and the grind of it was upsetting certain specific formulae which made up his life.  He was a fool.  He lighted a cigar and called himself names.

Someone brushed against him, jarring the hand that held the burning match.  He looked up.  It was Rossland.  The man had a mere twist of a smile on his lips.  In his eyes was a coolly appraising look as he nodded.

“Beg pardon.”  The words were condescending, carelessly flung at him over Rossland’s shoulder.  He might as well have said, “I’m sorry, Boy, but you must keep out of my way.”

Alan smiled back and returned the nod.  Once, in a spirit of sauciness, Keok had told him his eyes were like purring cats when he was in a humor to kill.  They were like that now as they flashed their smile at Rossland.  The sneering twist left Rossland’s lips as he entered the dining-room.

A rather obvious prearrangement between Mary Standish and John Graham’s agent, Alan thought.  There were not half a dozen people left at the tables, and the scheme was that Rossland should be served tete-a-tete with Miss Standish, of course.  That, apparently, was why she had greeted him with such cool civility.  Her anxiety for him to leave the table before Rossland appeared upon the scene was evident, now that he understood the situation.