"No, confound them! I wish they did!"
"Do you? I'm not sure I do."
She was so absorbed that she had not heard an approaching step, and was surprised to see Ruston jump up while her last sentence was but half said.
"My dear Miss Valentine," he cried, his face lighting up with a smile of pleasure, "how pleasant to meet you again!"
There was no mistaking the sincerity of his greeting. Marjory blushed as she gave him her hand, and he fixed his eyes on her in undisguised approval.
"You're looking splendid," he said. "Is it the air or the bathing or what?"
Perhaps it was both in part, but, more than either, it was a change that worked outwards from within, and was giving to her face the expression without which mere beauty of form or colour is poor in allurement. The last traces of what Lord Semingham meant by "insipidity" had been chased away. Ruston felt the change though he could not track it.
Marjory, a bad dissembler, greeted him nervously, almost coldly; she was afraid to let her gaze rest on him or on Mrs. Dennison for long, lest it should hint her secret. Her manner betrayed such uneasiness that Ruston noticed it. Mrs. Dennison did not, for something in Ruston's face had caught her attention. She had seen many expressions in his eyes as he looked at her—of sympathy, amusement, pleasure, even (what had pleased her most) puzzle, but never what she saw now. The look now was a man's homage to beauty—it differs from every other—a lover hardly seems to have it unless his love be beautiful—and she had never yet seen it when he looked at her. She turned away towards the sea, grasping the arm of her chair with a sudden grip that streaked her fingers red and white. Marjory also saw, and a wild hope leapt up in her that her task needed not the doing. But a moment later Ruston was back in Omofaga—young Sir Walter being his bridge for yet another transit.
"How's Mr. Dennison?" asked Marjory, when he gave her an opportunity.
"Oh, he's all right. You'd have heard, I suppose, if he hadn't been?"