And as Beatrix went on with Malcolm, all her appetite for breakfast gone, she said to herself with the inevitable unreasonableness of a woman in love, "He doesn't care, he doesn't care. Any pretty girl would do as well. He's glad to let me go."
Franklin met McLeod. "Mrs. Franklin must go ashore as soon as you can get her there. Mrs. Lester Keene is very ill. Mr. Fraser has a car waiting and he will drive my wife back to where we landed the party the other day,—Jones in charge. I can't be trusted with an engine now, y'know. I shall drive with them and come aboard again when you turn up, which you will do with best possible speed. Get that?"
"Yes, sir."
"Right." He waved his hand and went below to his own sanctum. His valet was busy in the bedroom. "Moffat, pack things for me for a couple of days, and tell the stewardess to do the same for Mrs. Franklin. Sharp's the word. We're leaving the yacht in half-an-hour."
Then he went to breakfast, having set things on the move in his characteristic way. Beatrix and Malcolm were talking generalities in a rather strained manner. The thoughts of both were busy. It was very obvious to Malcolm that something had happened to Beatrix. Her whole attitude, as well as her expression, had changed. She even seemed to be dressed differently in some subtle way. She was, too, he thought, less young, less confident, less on the defensive, less consistently brilliant, less all-in-the-shop-window,—more like the little girl who had tucked herself into his heart.
"What happened?" asked Franklin, doing more than justice to a liberal helping of scrambled eggs à Ludovic.
He'd never be able to eat so well if he cared, thought Beatrix.
Malcolm's eyes were clear again. He was less than the dust to the heroine of his boyhood and he had prayed that she might be won by Pel. After all, he was a poet.
"Well," he said, "that kind, good soul began by having hysterics on the quay. She was the first to realize, presumably because of a long course of novel reading, that we had been emptied away like rubbish and that the Galatea had turned seawards with Beatrix."
Franklin nodded and drank deeply of strong coffee.