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 to Cuba?" wonders Van Zandt and he remarks: "This will probably be your only chance to reach Havana in some little time, if, as you say, there are no more steamers. Really, I almost feel like insisting on your accepting my offer, as some sort of reparation for the annoyance to which you have been put and for which I feel partly responsible."

"But a blockade has been declared about the island. Your yacht"

"My yacht will land you at Santiago," supplies Van Zandt, with a peculiar smile. "We sail in about an hour, and we may as well proceed to the yacht at once. For I assume that you have decided to permit me to atone for the blackguardly behavior of my driver."

Mr. Felton consults Miss Hathaway and the matter is decided in the affirmative, and as Van Zandt hands them into their coupe, he tells the driver: "North River, foot of Twenty-third Street."

An hour later Miss Hathaway is expressing her admiration for the beautiful yacht that is soon to bear her to the tropics, and Capt. Beals is giving the last orders preparatory to getting under way.

As Van Zandt watches Mr. Felton cross from the pier to the deck of the Semiramis into his dark eyes comes a glitter of almost savage satisfaction, and he murmurs:

"I have you safe now, and by George! You will not soon escape me!"

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE PENALTY OF PROCRASTINATION.

A pencil of sunlight has struggled through the heavy draperies at the windows and laid a tiny straight line across the carpet in the comfortable apartments of Jack Ashley on West Thirty-fourth Street. The oriole timepiece on the mantel chimes the hour of 9 when that individual awakens with a series of prodigious yawns.