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himself, since the ladies were all running mad for him before he was fifteen. Myself, I think that to be sighing and dying for so foul-tempered a gentleman is ridiculous.” Suddenly she laughed, a delightful, gurgling sound. “What high flights! I make it sound as if Sandor strews corpses in his wake. If truth be told, Mark, I enjoy crossing swords with him.”
    “He takes,” her companion responded, “unfair advantage. Although, to give Sandor due credit, I don’t imagine he thinks of it that way.”
    “Certainly not!” said Binnie. “He doesn’t think of it at all! But we will speak no more of Sandor, if you please.”
    Through the streets they wandered, past shops displaying toys and rare china, lace and millinery. Their progress was not rapid; many other people had ventured forth this morning to partake of the salubrious air. There was Lord Petersham to be greeted, and his confidence to be received: he had adapted for his servants’ liveries a certain shade of brown, his preference for the color being due to his devotion to a widow of that name; Mr. Tommy Onslow; Sir John and Lady Lade, who related a risqué tale of how Major Hanger and the Regent had induced country girls to race on the Steine for the price of a new smock. It was a diversion, all agreed, slightly more elevating than shooting at chimney pots. And then Sir John repaired to Raggett’s, where every day thousands of pounds were won and lost; and Lady Lade adjourned to Mr. Donaldson’s library, there to sit under the colonnade and watch the fashionable parade up and down the street.
    Binnie contemplated her companion, who was looking a trifle severe. He did not like, she knew, her association with Letty Lade, who before her marriage to Sir John had been the mistress of a notorious highwayman known as Sixteen-string Jack, and whose speech, to say the best of it, was rather coarse. She looked away from his closed face and down the street, and saw the determined approach of a fashionably clad young lady, attended by a footman and a maidservant. “Oh, drat!” uttered Binnie. “Quickly, Mark, let us walk out to the pier.”
    With a quizzical expression, her companion complied. In a manner suggestive of great haste, they progressed along the sea-walk, bordered by the beach, that served as an esplanade. It was a busy roadway, crowded with pedestrians, bath carriages, riders, and numerous vehicles. On the beach itself were bathing-machines and donkey rides for the children. Livery stables were interspersed with shops in the business area behind the esplanade.
    Miss Baskerville was persuaded to bypass the local fish-market, where one could purchase fish caught but an hour before, and to step onto the pier that jutted into the sea. Part of its purpose was the landing of cross-channel passengers from Dieppe, who before the construction of the pier had been disgorged in boats on the beach. “Now,” said her companion, “what was all that about? Who was the young lady bearing down on us with all the determination of the Royal Fleet?”
    “That,” responded Binnie, with a speaking glance, “was Miss Choice-Pickerell. The holder of my brother’s heart. Cressida has drawn the leading-strings about Neal very nicely, but that is no reason why I may not hold her at arm’s length.” She sighed. “This is not sour grapes, I assure you, though that is how it must sound. I hope I am not the sort of sister who will resent any female her brother means to wed. But Miss Choice-Pickerell is a very opinionated young lady, with an exalted opinion of herself; and I am convinced Neal doesn’t care a straw for Cressida, nor she for him. Surely such a match can only result in misery.”
    Mark, who privately considered that Miss Baskerville was imposed upon not only by her cousin but also by her brother, gazed blankly out to sea. “What is it about the young lady that you so dislike?” he asked. “In appearance at least, she is unexceptionable.”
    This remark,