That classification of her with his best friends was exactly the attitude of his nature towards her, and what he saw during that flash of lightning was naturally extremely surprising, for, as he reflected to himself, despair should not look from one’s eyes when one hears that one’s best friends are going away. But, as he was bound in honour to do, he dismissed it as far as possible from his mind, and listened to Miss Vanderbilt’s scientific discourse about lightning.
“I should really feel much more comfortable if you would turn that big reflector round,” she was saying to Arthur Wrexham. “They say it attracts the thunderbolts, and I’m sure we don’t want to lay ourselves out to attract thunderbolts.”
Arthur Wrexham remonstrated gently.
“Oh, it really has no effect whatever on it,” he said. “In fact, glass is an insulator.”
This entirely vague statement was found to be consoling, and Miss Vanderbilt continued—
“I should be ashamed to be as silly as Bee about it,” she said. “Bee took off all her rings the last electric storm we had, and of course she couldn’t recollect where she put them, and you should have seen the colour of her frock when she came out of the coal-store. Oh, gracious! why, that flash went off quite by my hand here.”
Manvers was looking meditatively out into the night.
“The chances of being struck are so infinitesimal, Miss Vanderbilt, that I think it must have had a shot at you that time and missed. So by the law of probabilities it will not even aim at you again for a year or two. It really is a great consolation to know that one wouldn’t hear the thunder if one was struck.”
“Why, if you could hear the thunder, it would be all over,” said Miss Bee, with a brilliant inspiration.
“So after each flash we must wait anxiously for the thunder,” said Tom, “and then we shall know we’ve not been struck.”