"A little fire is quickly trodden out,
Which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench."
Henry VI.
Miss Denis was none the worse for her adventure the next morning, and was called upon to give a full, true, and particular account of herself to Mrs. Creery and Mrs. Home, also Mrs. Graham and Mrs. Green (who had prudently stayed all night on Ross). No one could imagine how the mistake had occurred, and all these ladies talked volubly together on the subject, and it afforded the island a nine days' wonder, though that was not saying much! Mrs. Creery was certainly most thankful that Helen (she now called her by her Christian name) had been brought back in safety, but she was by no means as well pleased at the means to which they owed her restoration.
"Of course, my dear Helen, you need not notice him," she said, apropos of Mr. Lisle; "just let your father thank him, or send a message by Mr. Quentin; that will be ample!"
Mr. Lisle having made Aberdeen with some difficulty, had toiled up hill, closely followed by the shivering boatmen, in quest of glasses of rum. He was cold, and stiff, and exhausted; both mind and body had been strung to their utmost tension for the last three hours, and he sank into a Bombay chair in the verandah, and threw off his soaking hat with a sense of thankfulness and relief. There he remained for a long time in his wet clothes, staring out on the black, ragged-looking clouds, through which a very watery moon was vainly trying to assert herself. Mr. Quentin was dining elsewhere, and Mr. Lisle kept dinner waiting till it was his good pleasure to partake of that meal. (Eastern cooks are accustomed to a meal being put back or forward an hour or so according to their masters' whims. These sudden orders never ruffle their composure, whilst in England such proceedings would cause domestic revolutions.) For more than an hour Mr. Lisle lay back in the comfortable chair which he had first occupied as a mere momentary resting-place; evidently he had something out of the common to occupy his thoughts. How long was it since he had spoken to a lady? (Apparently Mrs. Creery went for nought.) His mind reviewed but cursorily his morning's sport, dwelt a short time on the various incidents of that terrible sail, and rested finally for a considerable period on the contemplation of his lady passenger; he could see her before his mental vision quite distinctly now, as she stood on the pier steps, with her soaking, clinging dress, her streaming hair and colourless face, on which the torches threw a blinding light; see her stretching out her hands, and calling after him in a tone of agonized appeal,—
"Mr. Lisle, come back! Come back, Mr. Lisle!"
It was a curious fact, he said to himself with a rather cynical grin, that this was positively the very first invitation he had ever received to Ross; and the circumstance seemed to amuse him not a little.
After a while he began to think that he was rather a fool, sitting there mooning in his wet clothes, and he rose and stretched himself and went into the house, and having changed his garments, sat down to his solitary meal. He and Jim Quentin met at breakfast as usual; the latter was generally too much engrossed with his own proceedings to take any vivid interest in his companion's pursuits—to do as little work as possible, to get as much novel-reading, cigarette-smoking, and physical and mental ease, was the bent of his mind, and his thoughts were solely centred in himself and his own arrangements.
He never troubled his head about Lisle's "manias;" fishing, and boating, and shooting were all bores to him, involving far too much bodily exertion and discomfort. He took all his partner's adventures for granted, and never expected that these were of a more thrilling description than the capture of a big shark or the slaughter of a wild hog.