The Amateur | Page 6

"This is an owner's badge.
What was the name of his stable?"
"I don't know," she answered. She regarded the young man with sudden
uneasiness. "They only owned one horse, but I believe that gave them
the privilege of--"
"I see," exclaimed Ford. "Your husband is a bookmaker. But in London
he is a promoter of companies."
"So my friend tells me," said Mrs. Ashton. "She's just got back from
London. Her husband told her that Harry, my husband, was always at
the American bar in the Cecil or at the Salisbury or the Savoy." The girl
shook her head. "But a woman can't go looking for a man there," she
protested. "That's, why I thought you--"
"That'll be all right," Ford assured her hurriedly. "It's a coincidence, but
it happens that my own work takes me to these hotels, and if your
husband is there I will find him." He returned the photographs.
"Hadn't you better keep one?" she asked.
"I won't forget him," said the reporter. "Besides"--he turned his eyes
toward the doctor and, as though thinking aloud, said--"he may have
grown a beard."
There was a pause.
The eyes of the woman grew troubled. Her lips pressed together as
though in a sudden access of pain.
"And he may," Ford continued, "have changed his name."
As though fearful, if she spoke, the tears would fall, the girl nodded her
head stiffly.
Having learned what he wanted to know Ford applied to the wound a

soothing ointment of promises and encouragement.
"He's as good as found," he protested. "You will see him in a day, two
days after you land."
The girl's eyes opened happily. She clasped her hands together and
raised them.
"You will try?" she begged. "You will find him for me"--she corrected
herself eagerly--"for me and the baby?"
The loose sleeves of the kimono fell back to her shoulders showing the
white arms; the eyes raised to Ford were glistening with tears.
"Of course I will find him," growled the reporter.
He freed himself from the appeal in the eyes of the young mother and
left the cabin. The doctor followed. He was bubbling over with
enthusiasm.
"That was fine!" he cried. "You said just the right thing. There will be
no collapse now."
His satisfaction was swept away in a burst of disgust.
"The blackguard!" he protested. "To desert a wife as young as that and
as pretty as that."
"So I have been thinking," said the reporter. "I guess, he added gravely,
"what is going to happen is that before I find her husband I will have
got to know him pretty well."
Apparently, young Mrs. Ashton believed everything would come to
pass just as Ford promised it would and as he chose to order it; for the
next day, with a color not born of fever in her cheeks and courage in
her eyes, she joined Ford and the doctor at the luncheon-table. Her
attention was concentrated on the younger man. In him she saw the one
person who could bring her husband to her.
"She acts," growled the doctor later in the smoking-room, "as though
she was afraid you were going to back out of your promise and jump
overboard."
"Don't think," he protested violently, "it's you she's interested in. All
she sees in you is what you can do for her. Can you see that?"
"Any one as clever at seeing things as I am," returned the reporter,
"cannot help but see that."
Later, as Ford was walking on the upper deck, Mrs. Ashton came
toward him, beating her way against the wind. Without a trace of
coquetry or self-consciousness, and with a sigh of content, she laid her

hand on his arm.
"When I don't see you," she exclaimed as simply as a child, "I feel so
frightened. When I see you I know all will come right. Do you mind if I
walk with you?" she asked. "And do you mind if every now and then I
ask you to tell me again it will all come right?"
For the three days following Mrs. Ashton and Ford were constantly
together. Or, at least, Mrs. Ashton was constantly with Ford. She told
him that when she sat in her cabin the old fears returned to her, and in
these moments of panic she searched the ship for him.
The doctor protested that he was growing jealous.
"I'm not so greatly to be envied," suggested Ford. "'Harry' at meals
three times a day and on deck all the rest of the day becomes
monotonous. On a closer acquaintance with Harry he seems to be a
decent sort of a young man; at least he seems to have been at one time
very much in love with her."
"Well," sighed the doctor sentimentally,