Suddenly there was a rush of feet, and a hat came skimming along the lower deck, a broad-brimmed straw hat—a feminine hat. Springing from his seat he caught it, just in time to save it from going overboard, and turned to hand it to its pursuer and owner.
“Thanks so much,” said a sweet voice. Then the speaker stopped short in amazement and changed colour. “Why, it’s Mr Orlebar—pardon me—Sir Philip, I should have said.”
“It used to be ‘Philip’ at one time, Alma,” was the reply, with the ghost of a sad smile. And then these two stood looking into each other’s eyes in silence. Neither seemed able to say a word.
It was as she had implied. Sir Francis Orlebar was no more. Never recovering from the prostration into which he had been thrown by Fordham’s revelation, he had sunk into a decline and had succumbed three months later, tended by his son devotedly to the last. Then Philip, reserving enough for his modest wants, had apportioned the remainder between his stepmother and that other who had a legal claim upon him. This done, he had left Claxby Court and had started upon his travels again.
She who was his wife, in the eye of the law, he had never set eyes on since that fateful night. He had tried by every means in his power to find some channel through which the mystery might be cleared up, but in vain. The only person who could have done so was dead, and her last words, her last look, her last behaviour, conclusively confirmed him in his very darkest conjectures. The bare recollection of the subject was unutterably nauseous and repulsive to him now.
Old Glover had in due course served him with a writ in the threatened breach of promise action. Nothing could be more repellent than to be dragged forth into notoriety thus, yet what could he do? He was too poor to offer any compromise, even if it were not the persistently rancorous intention of that estimable British merchant to exact his pound of flesh in spite of everything, and that pound of flesh the dragging of him—Philip—into notoriety and a court of law. But at the last moment chance had befriended him. For the beauteous Edith had succumbed to the prismatic attractions of a ritualistic parson of fine presence and ample means, and this cleric had, under pain of cancelling his own engagement, laid a stern embargo on his future bride making an exhibition of herself in a public court. So, whereas it is manifestly impossible to bring an action for breach of promise failing the consent of the interesting plaintiff, old Glover was obliged to deny himself the gratification of his rancour, and to console himself characteristically with the sound commercial reflection that, after all, they had got much the better bargain of the two. For the parson was well off, and would very likely be a bishop one day, or, at any rate an archdeacon, whereas Philip Orlebar, though now a baronet, would always have been as poor as Job, and would never have done any good for himself or anybody else. In which conjecture he was probably right.
“It’s an odd thing I should not have seen you all this time,” said Philip at last, realising that it was necessary to say something. “Yet you must have come on board at Geneva.”
“No—at Nyon.”
“At Nyon! That would account for it. I have been sitting here almost ever since we left Geneva, and, of course, I can’t see the gangway from here, or who lands, or who embarks. Have you been staying there?”
“Only a few days. The people I am with were there to see some friends of theirs. But—between ourselves—it was rather slow.”