II

The Nubia was homeward bound, and her passengers were experiencing the inconveniences incidental to a passage through the Red Sea. Now and then the picturesque figure of a lascar darted across the semi-darkness. The stewards were throwing the mattresses upon the deck under a starlit sky. The captain and his first office had just surprised a tête-à-tête taking place in a quiet corner of the ship, with diversified feelings of annoyance.

‘Is Henley serious?’ the former inquired irritably. ‘Because it’s a deuced awkward business. Miss Playfair is in my charge, and it isn’t the first time I have had trouble over little affairs of the kind. Relatives are always unreasonable—even other people’s relatives—but, by Jove, I think the attractive objects of their solicitude are worse.’

‘They met in India, so I suppose it’s all right’, returned the young man curtly, disinclined to discuss a situation which inspired him personally with a sensation of despair.

‘I shall be glad to see Plymouth and the last of such an embarrassing cargo’, returned the captain, turning on his heel.

‘Moi aussi’, muttered the young lieutenant sulkily.

But the subjects of this brief discourse did not apparently share these sentiments of relief at the prospect of gaining port.

‘In spite of this awful heat, I wish it would never end’, a deep voice proclaimed from the darkness. ‘It’s ideal! The sea and the sky, this glorious sense of solitude, and you and I the only people on earth, it seems, in the midst of it. Say’—in a lower key—‘you wish it might never end.’

‘What is the good of wishing, when you persist that it must end when we go ashore?’

‘The gods may be merciful.’

‘You mean Lady Hopedene may be—cold?’

‘She is always cold; a lovely little piece of ice. She never cared a hang for me, Mildred, or don’t you think she must have betrayed it then?’

‘I suppose she wanted to see what stuff you were made of. Why did she give you the chance of going back?’

‘It was only a manner (she has a charming manner) of saying “No”. Women’—he pronounced it with an air of profundity—‘don’t try experiments on the men they love.’

‘Then why go back at all? It is only inviting humiliation, if that’s your view of it.’ Her tone, usually languorous, took a brisker note.

‘I must, dearest: I gave my word.’

‘But you say she insisted upon not pledging you?’

‘I pledged myself.’

‘You are too quixotic. Suppose you find her consoled?’

‘Let us suppose it,’—he seized her hands,—‘the other possibility stuns me, let us forget it. Tonight, tomorrow, and still tomorrow are ours. Mildred—’