She was a remarkable-looking, even fascinating girl, quite different to his impression of her at first sight. She had a radiant smile, wonderfully expressive eyes (those eyes alone made her beautiful, and lifted her completely out of the commonplace), and a high-bred air. Strange that she should be related to this vulgar old woman, and little did the vulgar old woman guess how she had been championed by her English niece. The moon shining full on the lake tempted the whole party out of doors. Captain Waring made a basely ungrateful (but wholly vain) attempt to exchange ladies with his friend. Mrs. Brande, however, loudly called upon him to attend her, as she paced slowly down to the road; and as he lit his cigar at his cousin’s, he muttered angrily under his moustache—
“I call this beastly unfair. I had the old girl all dinner time. You’ve got six to four the best of it!”
CHAPTER XV.
A PROUD MOMENT.
Captain Waring envied his comrade, who, with Miss Gordon, sauntered on a few paces ahead of him and, what he mentally termed, “his old woman of the sea.” She never ceased talking, and could not endure him out of her sight. The others appeared to get on capitally; they had plenty to say to one another, and their frequent laughter excited not alone his envy, but his amazement.
Mark was not a ladies’ man; this squiring of dames was a new departure. Such an avocation was far more in his own line, and by all the laws of the fitness of things, he should be in Mark’s place—strolling by moonlight with a pretty girl along the shores of this lovely mountain tarn. What were they talking about? Mark never could find much to say to girls—straining his ears, not from the ungentlemanly wish to listen, but merely from pure friendly curiosity—he paid but scant attention to Mrs. Brande’s questions, and gave her several misleading answers.
“His cousin had no profession—he was a gentleman at large—yes—his protége—yes. He himself was a man of leisure—yes.” Yes—yes—yes; he said “Yes” to everything indiscriminately; it is so easy to say “Yes!”
“It is strange that we should come across one another twice on the same journey,” remarked Jervis to his companion.
“If you had not come across me the first time, I suppose I should be sitting in that train still!”
“Oh no; not quite so long as all that.”
“You won’t say anything to aunt about——”