On the hurricane deck, under the lee of one of the boats swung inward and resting on chocks, leaning over the taffrail, stand two figures—one tall, powerful, masculine—wrapped in a long ulster, the other lithe, graceful, feminine—cloaked and hooded, for, if the atmosphere contains no chill, it holds a dampness which bids fair to do duty for the same. Surely that oval face, those delicate, regular features can belong to no other than Violet Avory. No need to identify her companion.
“You did that well, Violet,” Sellon was saying. “The idea of that old party sitting there mounting guard over your wraps on board the wrong ship is a reminiscence that’ll set me up in laughter for the rest of my life.”
“Poor old Mrs Aldridge,” said Violet, with a touch of compunction. “I’m afraid she won’t get over it in a hurry—and she’s a good old thing. But it’s all Hilda Selwood’s fault. She shouldn’t have set her relations on to ‘police’ me.” And the speaker’s tone became hard and defiant.
“Ha, ha! It wasn’t in them to upset our little programme, though. When old Selwood put you on board the Siberian at Fort Elizabeth, he reckoned it was all safe then. So it was, as far as he was concerned. He’s a good chap, though, is Selwood, and I wouldn’t willingly plant such a sell upon him if I could help it, but I couldn’t. It’s ever a case of two ‘sells’ as between him and me, to distort his old joke. It was nearly a third one, though, Violet, for I was beginning to make up my mind you were never coming. In another minute I should have gone ashore again when I saw your cab tearing along like mad. As it was, we only fetched the Rangatira by the skin of our teeth, and a royal honorarium to the boatmen.”
“Ah, Maurice, I have got you now—and you are mine. Are you not, darling?”
“It looks uncommonly like it.”
“For life?”
“For that identical period. So now, cheer up, my Violet. The world is a mere football at the feet of those who have the means to exploit it, and we have. That wretched little foggy England isn’t the whole world.”
The great steamship went shearing on through the midnight sea, heaving to the Atlantic surge, as she stood upon her course. But the other vessel swiftly speeding northward—soon would she arrive with a forestalment in a measure—in the unaccountable non-appearance of one of her passengers—of the terrible news which must eventually be broken to Violet’s mother.
But whereas Violet’s own will was the sole principle which had been allowed to govern her life from the day of her birth, it must be admitted, sorrowfully, that her mother was now only reaping what she had sown.