"Of course I don't mind," Maida answered him, believing that she began to see light upon the complicated situation. "I'll be ready to start in five minutes."
And she was. Her maid gave her a veiled hat and long cloak; and she was helped on board the motorboat. Still the elder member of its crew did not turn, but went on feverishly rubbing something with an oily rag. The dainty white-clad passenger was made comfortable, the boy tucking a rug over her knees. As he did this, he glanced up from under his cap, as if involuntarily, straight into Maida's chiffon-covered face. She had been too busy thinking of other things to notice the lad with particularity: but with his face so close to hers for an instant, it struck her for the first time that it was like another face remembered with distaste. There rose before Maida a fleeting picture of a young lay sister at the house of the Grey Sisterhood far away on Long Island. The girl had been of the monkey type, lithe and thin, brown and freckled, her age anything between seventeen and twenty-two; and she had seemed to regard Miss Odell, the Head Sister's favourite, with jealous dislike.
"The same type," thought Maida. "They might be brother and sister. But the boy is better looking than the girl. Funny they should look alike: she so American, he with his strong Cockney accent!"
A minute more, and the motor-boat had left the side of the Lily Maid and was shooting away past the private landing-place of Hasletowers. She took the direction whence the yacht had come the previous night, before the dark shapes above the trees had been pointed out by me. Still, there was no other yacht in sight: the waters were empty save for a little black speck far away which might be, Maida thought, the bell buoy of which we had talked. Indeed, as the boat glided on—at visibly reduced speed now—she fancied that she caught the doleful notes of the tolling bell.
"The yacht where Lady Haslemere expects us, must be a long way from shore;" Maida said.
"Don't be impatient," the man's voice answered. "You will come to your destination soon enough."
A thrill of horror ran through her veins with an electric shock. She knew the voice. She had heard it last in a house in Egypt. The man turned deliberately as he spoke, and looked at her. The face was the face of her past dream, the still more dread reality of her present——
And so, after all, this was to be the end of her love story!
"You do not speak," Essain said.
"I have nothing to say," Maida heard herself answer; and she wondered at the calmness of her own voice. It was low, but it scarcely trembled. So sure she was that there was no hope, no help, she was not even frightened. Simply, she gave herself up for lost: and the sick stab of pain in her heart was for me. She was afraid—but only afraid that I might reproach myself for leaving her alone.