“No chance—they’re glued!” said Jessie, gloomily, and Lucile looked from one to the other of them despairingly.
“I wish I knew what you were getting at,” she sighed.
“Mademoiselle has been very seek?” the voice was low, caressing, with the slightest suggestion of a foreign accent.
Lucile turned her head and found herself looking into the bright, restless eyes of the mysterious stranger.
For the first moment she was startled and a little confused, but the next instant, recovering herself, she answered, gravely, “Yes, I have been rather under the weather for a couple of days,” and she added, with her bright smile, “The thing that bothers me most is the thought of what I have missed during that time.”
“Mademoiselle is brave,” he smiled back. “Most would think only of their sufferings. However, there are still two good days in which to see everything.”
“Two days?” sighed Lucile. “It seems to me as if it would take two years to see all I’d like to.”
“Ah, but it is Mademoiselle’s first voyage.” There was an undertone of sadness in the low voice that made Lucile steal a quick glance at him. There was something about the man, perhaps in the tired droop of his shoulders, perhaps something in the wistful way he had of looking far out to sea, as if seeking the solution of his problem there; perhaps it was only the pathos in his low, Southern voice. Be that as it may, Lucile’s heart went out to him then and there. 84
“When one has been back and forth, back and forth, many times,” he went on, “he is bound to lose that so fresh enthusiasm and long only for the shore where something may be done. At such times the days, they seem to have no end. But I transgress,” he interrupted himself, with a little deprecatory laugh. “Mademoiselle should have reminded me.”
“You speak of having crossed the ocean many times,” said Mr. Payton, who, with his wife, had approached the absorbed little group unknown to them.