"Because, unless I am greatly mistaken, you are the lady whom I had the honor of marrying in the Castle of San Juan at Cartagena. You may be known as Miss Madge Gray on board this ship, but your name in the register was Madeleine."

"My name is Nina, not Madge."

Maseden was taken aback for a few seconds, yet the fact could not be gainsaid that the speaker, whether Madge or Nina, did not repudiate the general accuracy of his statement. Moreover, he was almost sure of his ground now. His "wife" was probably flirting with Sturgess. Nina, as usual, was left to her own devices, since the forecastle steward had reported that Senor Gray was ill and confined to his cabin.

"At any rate, you do not deny that either your sister or yourself is legally entitled to pose as Mrs. Philip Alexander Maseden?" he said.

"I am not aware that either of us can fairly be described as posing in that distinguished capacity."

The retort was glib enough. It amused the man.

"Perhaps I put the bald truth rather awkwardly," he said. "Let me, then, ask a plain question. Did I marry you, or your sister, last Tuesday morning?"

"You certainly err if you think that I shall discuss the affairs of my family with a complete stranger," was the unhesitating answer.

"Yet you, or your sister, did not scruple to marry one."

"Are _you_ Mr. Maseden?"

"I am. Haven't I said so? I implied it, at any rate."

"Then why are you in disguise, posing--it is your own word--as a Spanish cowboy?"

"Because I'm trying to save my miserable life. Don't think me ungrateful, madam. I owe my escape to the phenomenal circumstances brought about by the desire of a charming young lady to become Mrs. Maseden, if only for a brief half hour. I am not claiming any--privileges, shall I say?--on that account. But I can hardly credit that, having gone through the ordeal of such a ceremony, you would refuse to tell me your motive, so I reluctantly revert to my first opinion, namely, that your sister is my wife."

"Reluctantly! Why reluctantly?"

There was more than a touch of bewilderment in the cry. Maseden interpreted it as a fencer's trick to gain time.

"I don't mind being absolutely candid," he laughed. "You see, time hangs heavy on my hands here. I have nothing to do except watch for a glimpse of an unknown wife. Queer, isn't it? Anyhow, my fate doesn't seem to worry sister Madge, who finds consolation elsewhere; so, of the two, if I must be wed to one of you, I imagine I would prefer you."

"I think you are intolerably rude, Mr. Maseden. Madge was right when she said--"

She checked herself with a little gasp of dismay. Maseden laughed again.

"Please don't spare me," he cried. "What did Madge say?"

"I decline to discuss the matter any further."

"But why should we quarrel over a minor point? You have tacitly admitted that your sister married me. Give me some notion of her motive.

That is all I ask. It may help."

"How help?"

"When I take unto myself a wife I expect to be allowed some freedom of choice in the matter. I certainly refuse to have her picked for me by a rascal like Steinbaum. If I win clear of Buenos Ayres and reach New York I shall take the speediest steps to undo the matrimonial knot tied in Cartagena. There may be legal complications, which will be attended, I suppose, by a certain amount of publicity. It will help some, as Mr.

Sturgess would say, if I know just why the lady wanted to wed in the first instance. Surely there is reason behind that simple request. Your sister begged to be allowed to marry me because I was condemned to death. At least, such was Steinbaum's story. Was _that_ true, to begin with?"

No answer. Maseden felt that he had cornered her.

"There must have been some such ground for an extraordinary action," he went on. "To the best of my knowledge she had never seen me. I question if she even knew my name. I--"

A door opened, and a stream of light fell on the deck some feet away.

Sturgess's voice reached them clearly.

"Guess she's tucked up cozy in a deck chair," he was saying. "It's no time to retire to roost yet, anyhow."

"Please go now," whispered Nina tremulously. "You mustn't be seen talking to me. I--I'll discuss things with Madge, and if possible, come here about the same hour to-morrow, or next day. I--I'll do my best."

Without another word, Maseden swung himself over the rail. When below the level of the deck he clung to the ladder and listened, not meaning to act ungenerously, but because of the other man's rapid approach.

"Ah, there you are, Miss Nina!" cried Sturgess. "Sister Madge is bored stiff by my company, but was polite enough to pretend that she was anxious about you."

"I've been star-gazing," said the girl, hastening towards him.

"So've I," grinned Sturgess. "You two girls have the finest eyes I've ever--"

His voice trailed away into silence. Maseden dropped to the deck.

"Hang it all!" he muttered, strangely disconsolate. "When Fate took me by the scruff of the neck and married me to one of two sisters, neither of whom I had ever seen, she might have been kind enough, the jade, to tie me to the right one!"

Yet, even to his thinking, Madge and Nina were like as a couple of pins!

Being an eminently sensible sort of fellow, he realized in the next breath that Madge might be quite as nice a girl as Nina.

Then the thought struck him that she was purposely making things easier for him by cultivating a friendship with Sturgess. In any case, Sturgess was obviously destined to act as a pawn in the game. Even he, Maseden, had not scrupled to use that gentleman at sight when anxious to board the _Southern Cross_ without attracting the attention of the news-mongering boatmen of Cartagena.

That night he lay awake for hours. For one thing, the ship was running into bad weather again, and complained nosily of the buffeting her stout frame was receiving. For another, his own course was beset with difficulties. He failed completely to understand the attitude of sister Nina.

If Madeleine--or Madge, as he had better learned to distinguish her--had sought marriage with a man about to die as a means to escape from some unbearable duress, was her plight accentuated rather than bettered by the fact that her husband still lived? If so, the announcement that he meant to obtain a legal dissolution of the bond at the earliest possible moment would relieve the tension.

But what if her need demanded that she should remain wed, a wife in name only? A development of that sort foreshadowed complexities of a rare order. Maseden knew himself as one capable of Quixotic action--even the scheming Steinbaum had paid him _that_ tribute--but it was asking too much that he should go through life burdened with a wife who treated him as a benevolent stranger.

Common sense urged that they should meet and discuss a most trying and equivocal situation as frankly and fully as might be. Why, then, had Nina Gray been so disturbed, so anxious to keep the married pair apart?

Both girls knew he was alive. What purpose could it serve that the fact should be ignored?

He puzzled his brain to recall incidents he had heard of Steinbaum's history, but investigation along that line drew a blank. Was Suarez mixed up in the embroglio? It was unlikely. Though the man had spent some years in the United States and in Europe, he had not left San Juan since he, Maseden, came there, and, before that period, both Madge and Nina Gray must have been girls in short frocks and long tresses.

Perhaps the father's record would provide a clew. Somehow, though he had never set eyes on Mr. Gray save as a shadowy form on a dark night, Maseden sensed him as unsympathetic. He was forced to form a judgment on the flimsiest of material, having none other; but Gray's voice, his way of speaking to his daughters, had grated.

First impressions are treacherous guides; nevertheless the philosopher whom they cannot mislead does not exist.

The following day was the longest in Maseden's experience. Monotony, in itself, is wearying; when, to a dull routine of meals and occasional talk with men of an inferior type is added the positive discomfort of confinement in the most exposed and cramped part of a ship during a stiff gale, monotony becomes akin to torture.

At last, however, night fell. There was no improvement in the weather, which, if anything, grew worse; but a change in the ship's course, or a shifting of the wind--no one to whom Maseden might speak could give him any reliable data on the point--brought the _Southern Cross_ on a more even keel.

Here, at least, was some slight compensation for the leaden-footed hours of waiting. Nina Gray might be a good sailor, but it was hardly reasonable to expect that she would keep her tryst when the big steamer was trying alternately to stand on end or roll bodily over to port.

About nine o'clock Maseden made out a shrouded figure in the position where his "sister-in-law" had stood the previous night. He hastened from the shelter of the forecastle, and was promptly drenched from head to foot by a shower of spray. He was half-way up the ladder when a voice reached him.