Cara stood, still looking shoreward, a furrow between her brows, her checks pale, her fingers tightly gripping the rail. She was holding with that grip to all her shaken self-command.
She saw the fang-edged skyline of lower Manhattan lifting its gray shafts through wet streamers of fog; she saw flotillas of squat ferry-boats shouldering their ways against the sullen heave of the river's tide-water; she heard the discordant shriek of their steam throats; she saw the tilting swoop of a hundred gulls, buffeting the wind; but she was conscious only of the vista of oily water widening between herself and him.
Von Ritz had long since drifted into the smoking-room where the men were christening the voyage with brandy-and-soda and dropping into tentative groups, regardful of future poker games.
Pagratide, at Cara's elbow, was silent, respecting her silence.
When at last the two had the deck to themselves and Manhattan had become a shadowy and ragged monotone, she turned and smiled. It was a smile of accepting the inevitable. He went with her to the forward deck where her staterooms were situated, and left her there in silence.
Von Ritz, standing apart near the threshold of the smokeroom, heard his name paged almost before the speaker had entered the door, and turned to take from the hand of the bearer a Marconigram just relayed from shore. He read it and for an instant a look of pain crossed the features that rarely yielded to expression. Then he sought out Karyl's stateroom.
Karyl turned wearily from the wintry picture of a sullenly heaving sea, to answer the rap on the door. His face did not brighten as he recognized Von Ritz.
The Colonel was that type of being upon whom men may depend or whom they must fear. Whenever there was need, Karyl had come to know that there would be Von Ritz, but also there went with him an austerity and an impersonality that robbed him of the gratitude and love he might have claimed.
Now there was a note almost surly in the expression with which the Prince looked up to greet his father's confidential representative.
"Well?" he demanded.