"Regretting it?" said Mrs. Mildmay, who could never see through hints and inuendoes and always required things to be as plain as plate-glass.
"Don't you see, my dear madam," said the captain, lowering his voice to a musical pitch, which was as distinct as a trumpet call to the ears of the motionless girl, "don't you see that the young fellow is really in love with Lady Ethel and that he would win her but for Lady Lackland's doubt of his steadiness. A flirt, my dear madam, is to be evaded by every prudent mother and every sensible girl——"
Violet rose, white and statuesque.
"I was nearly asleep," she said, looking round the room with a sad, stupefied look in her eyes of dumb pain, like some one roused to a sense of a lifelong misery. "I—I am very tired, aunt, and I think I shall go to bed."
The captain was by her side, ringing for her candle, in a moment, and she smiled—yes, smiled at him as he pressed her hand and murmured a good-night.
Brave Violet! what did that smile cost her?
She had heard every word, and every word rang in her ears and stabbed at her breast when she laid her head on her pillow.
While Violet was lying awake and burning with mortification and a wounded heart Jemmie Sanderson was down on his knees beside his straw pallet in the policeman's cot thanking Heaven for the safe return of his benefactor and greatly worshiped Leicester. He loved Leicester with a love that passed all calculation. He had stood unnoticed in the crowd, close to the ladies and gentlemen, when they had landed and, unseen by Leicester, he had stood close behind him, weeping his childish heart out with happy tears of joy and gratitude.
So the two, woman and boy, were at the same time enduring widely different feelings for the same man.
Life is full of strange contradictions.