'But you would make it possible if you could, eh?' asked Caffyn.
'I don't want to hurt your feelings, Caffyn,' said Mark, 'but really you're going a little too far. And even if I had been engaged to Miss Langton (which is very far from the case), I don't exactly see what right you have, after—under the circumstances, you know—to go in for the fire-eating business.'
'You mean I'm out of the running, whoever wins?' said Caffyn. 'I daresay you're right; I'm not aware that I ever entered for the prize. But never mind that. She has taken a dislike to me, but I may be allowed to feel an interest in her still, I suppose. I should like to see her happy, and if you could tell me that you were the man, why then——'
'Well?' said Mark, as the other paused with a curious smile.
'Why, then I should feel at ease about her, don't you know,' he said gently.
'I only wish I could ease your mind for you in that way,' said Mark, 'but it's too soon for that yet.'
'You do mean to ask her, then?' said Caffyn, with his eyes on the little brown-and-yellow imperial postwagen which had just rattled up to the hotel, and the driver of which, in his very unbecoming glazed billycock hat with the featherbrush plume, was then cumbrously descending from his box. Mark had not meant to confide in Caffyn at all; he had only known him a short time, and, although their intimacy had grown so rapidly, with a little more reflection he might have shrunk from talking of Mabel to one whom, rightly or wrongly, she held in abhorrence. But then Caffyn was so sympathetic, so subdued; the temptation to talk of his love to somebody was so strong, that he did not try to resist it.
'Yes, I do,' he said, and his dark eyes were soft and dreamy as he spoke, 'some day ... if I dare. And if she says what I hope she will say, I shall come to you, old fellow, for congratulations.'
He looked round, but Caffyn had started up abruptly and he was alone. 'Very odd of him,' thought Mark, until he saw him meeting the Featherstones on their way back from the service.
Some minutes later, as Gilda and Caffyn were in a corner of the exhibition of carved work at the lower end of the town, she took advantage of the blaring of two big orchestral Black Forest organs, each performing a different overture, and of the innumerable cuckoo cries from the serried rows of clocks on the walls, to go back to their conversation at the table d'hôte. 'Have you asked him yet? Mabel is not engaged to him after all?' (her face fell as she gathered this). 'It is all a mistake, then? Of course it was a great relief to you to hear that?'