“Sybil Bultiwell!” Jacob gasped, forgetting all about his seasickness.
“Maurice Penhaven!” Felixstowe exclaimed. “What in the name of thunder are you two doing here together?”
Sybil, being a woman, was the first to recover herself. She laughed softly.
“We do seem to come across one another in strange places and under strange conditions, don’t we?” she said to Jacob. “This, perhaps, is the strangest of all. I am on my honeymoon.”
“Married?” Jacob gasped, throwing off his rugs and sitting upright. “But I was going to—you were—oh, damn!”
She made a little grimace and drew him to one side.
“I can guess what is in your mind, Mr. Pratt,” she said, “and I want to have a perfectly clear understanding with you. Tell me now, did I ever give you the slightest encouragement? Did I ever give you the faintest reason to hope that I should ever, under any circumstances, be willing to marry you?”
“I can’t say that you did,” Jacob admitted sadly, gripping at the rail against which they were standing. “I never left off hoping, though.”
“Now that I have become unexpectedly a very happy woman,” Sybil went on, with a new softness in her tone, “I will confess that I was perhaps unreasonable so far as regards your treatment of my father.”
“Thank God for that, anyhow!” Jacob muttered.