‘And yet you were so cruelly upset by his disappearance. The superiority,’ apostrophised Gaston, ‘of the unselfish sex over ours.’
‘I was not only upset by his disappearance,’ said Linda, still taking an interest in the waves, ‘I am disturbed about him, in my conscience, still. If Doctor Thorne takes the slightest chill to-night, we shall be having the old jungle fever back upon him.’
Gaston sympathised as to this contingency, not, as yet, perceiving the drift of Linda’s alarms.
‘At Robbie’s age one cannot be too prudent. To run into one of these cold Channel fogs might end in something quite too serious. And, although the stars make a pretence at shining,’ Linda raised her head with tentative playfulness, ‘the enemy is at hand. I feel fog in the air.’
‘The air is clearer than it has been all day. In another three or four hours the sun will have risen. We shall be in Guernsey——’
‘In another twenty minutes we shall be outside Alderney harbour. I was talking matters over, some minutes ago, with Ozanne.’ Linda inspected the white hand, resting on the bulwark, with attention. ‘And he has most good-naturedly consented to let me and Robbie land. By signalling promptly for a boat we shall not detain you Princess people five minutes. There is the dearest little primitive hotel in Alderney, close to Maxwell Grimsby’s diggings. You remember my telling you about it?’
Gaston remembered Mrs. Thorne’s telling him about the dearest little primitive hotel.
‘The Doctor will have a good night’s rest to recruit his strength, and to-morrow afternoon, if the day is warm, we shall make our way back to our home and infant by the Cherbourg steamer.’
Now Maxwell Grimsby, a gunner by profession, a painter by love, was one of Gaston Arbuthnot’s best artist friends—best, too, in the higher acceptation of the elastic word. Grimsby was no manufacturer of prettiness, no amateur idler. Did not a series of beach studies bearing the well-known initials ‘M. G.’ testify to the world how diligently this very summer’s enforced imprisonment in Alderney was put to use? During the past fortnight Gaston had constantly vacillated in his intention of looking up his friend, for ever declaring how much better work a man might do on the grand old rock, yonder, than disturbed by the hundred distractions of pleasant, idle, sociable, little Sarnia—never starting, for ever wishing he were gone! Here was occasion to his hand, a chance of looking up Grimsby without even the preliminary trouble of packing one’s portmanteau!