"I know, dear," he went on in his grave quiet voice, "that at your age money, and all the things it buys, seem just empty folly. But, believe me, there comes a time when being rich counts a lot towards happiness. I'm not trying to dazzle you, but you know all mine is yours—you shall live in Park Lane if you care to—or I'll turn all wide Scotland into a deer forest for you to play in…."
He paused. "But there is one thing, of course, that might make all this sound vulgar and sordid." He considered her with his clear blue eyes. "Are you in love with anyone else?" he asked.
Cecily clutched recklessly at the alternative to absurd tears.
"Yes," she said.
Armitage stood quite still for a moment. His calm, direct gaze never left her face, and after a moment he squared his big shoulders with an abrupt, characteristic movement.
"Then he is the luckiest man," he said quietly, "that ever won God's most perfect gift."
He gave her a funny stiff little inclination of the head and walked away.
* * * * *
Otto von Sperrgebiet did not raise the periscope above the surface again for some hours. The Submarine, entirely submerged, drove through the water until night. After nightfall they travelled on the surface until the first pale bars of dawn appeared in the eastern sky. Von Sperrgebiet was on the conning-tower as soon as it was light, searching the horizon with his glasses.
"It is strange," he said to his Second-in-Command. "We ought to have sighted that light vessel before now." At his bidding a sailor fetched the lead line and took a sounding. Together they examined the tallow at the bottom of the lead, and von Sperrgebiet made a prolonged scrutiny of the chart. "H'm'm!" he said. "I don't understand." Submerging again, they progressed at slow speed for some hours and he took another sounding. The sky was overcast and no sights could be taken.