But when the day came he regretted it. He wished he had refused and had gone away. Then he made a fine resolution.
"I will not go to this dinner," he said to himself, savagely, as he walked quickly up and down his room. "I will not go near her again. It is not right, and I will not do it. I will sail over to Naples at once, and send back a telegram of excuse, saying that a matter of the most urgent importance keeps me there. So it is—I should think so—a matter of very urgent importance. Oh! Julius Batiscombe, what an ass you are, to be sure!" With that he crammed some things into a bag, sent for his man, and descended in hot haste to the shore. There was no time to be lost, for it was already four o'clock in the afternoon and the invitation was for eight. He could just reach Naples and send his telegram in time to prevent the Carantoni from waiting for him.
The lazy breeze was dying away, and he wished he had had the sense to make up his mind sooner. But his men rowed lustily, and kept time, so that the boat spun along fairly enough.
"I shall do it," said Julius Batiscombe to himself.
He was happy enough in the sensation that he was cheating his fate and was about to escape a serious affection. Then he laughed at the comic side of the case, and lit a cigar and blew great clouds of smoke over his shoulder. But fate and Batiscombe were old enemies, and fate generally got the better of it.
It chanced that on this very day Leonora and Marcantonio had determined to go out in the new boat. For Marcantonio had wanted to give his wife a surprise, and had got from Naples a beautiful clean-built launch. He had said nothing about it, and had patiently borne her reproaches at his indifference to sailing, until on the previous evening he had taken her down the descent to the rocks and had shown her his purchase, which had just arrived by the steamer. Of course she was enchanted, and determined to make the most of it, for she was really fond of the water. Accordingly, on this very day, she and her husband sallied forth with six men,—for he had not dared to give her a smaller crew than Mr. Batiscombe's. She was in such a hurry to go that she said she did not mind the sun in the least,—oh dear, no! she rather liked it. And so it came to pass that a few minutes after Julius had given his men the word to fall to their oars at the little beach of the town of Sorrento, a long low craft, painted in dark green and gold, and looking exceedingly trim and "fit" with its long lateen yards and raking masts, shot out from the cleft beneath Leonora's villa.
Batiscombe looked straight before him, steering by the Naples shore, and intent on wasting neither time nor distance. He might have been out half an hour or more when a remark from one of his crew made him look round, and he was aware of a dark green boat two or three hundred yards astern, but rapidly pulling up to him. He started, for though he could not see the faces of the occupants, he recognised a parasol that Leonora had taken to Castellamare.
"It is the new boat of the Marchese Carantoni," said the sailor who had first spoken to Batiscombe. The man had seen it arrive by the steamer on the previous evening, and had helped to put it into the water to be rowed down to the villa. Batiscombe gave one more look and groaned inwardly. He would make a fight for it, though, he thought. He encouraged his men not to allow themselves to be overtaken by a parcel of Neapolitans, as he derisively called the crew of Carantoni's boat. His own men were tough fellows from the north of Italy, bearded, and broad, and bronzed; but his boat, built for rougher weather and rougher work than pleasure-rowing in the bay of Naples, was twice as heavy as the slight green craft astern. His sturdy men set their teeth and tugged hard, but the others gained on them.
Leonora and Marcantonio had recognised the cut of Batiscombe's boat and crew from a distance; and, in profound ignorance of his amiable intentions of flight, they imagined nothing more amusing than to race him.
"If we cannot beat him," said Leonora, breathless with excitement, "I will never come out in your boat again!"