He straightened up and a solemn joy overspread his eyes and face. “I thank you, Miss Marne,” he said, barely resting for an instant one hand upon hers that lay on the rail. “I had little doubt what your answer would be, because you are a good woman. But I wanted to know for a certainty. It is my final warrant that I am right.”
He said no more, and Henrietta, a little awed by the rapt, triumphant look with which, sitting upright with head thrown back, he gazed into the distance, kept silence also. And in a few moments their ship bumped into its berth and they joined silently the crowd that pressed forward.
After that she was conscious in his manner toward her of an increased air of guardianship. It gave her a warm sense of comfort and security and she found herself gradually confiding in it more and more. She even sought his advice, finally, upon the intimate personal problems that were troubling her so deeply. Did he think she ought to permit her sister to motor with Mr. Brand? Was it likely that she herself could find another situation that would carry her safely out of her financial difficulties if she should continue to find her work under Mr. Brand so disagreeable?
“I hesitate to say anything to you about these things, because I know how much you dislike him,” she apologized, “but I feel so uncertain and so much worried about them, and there is nobody else to whom I can go who knows him as well as you do. His whole character has changed so much in the last few months that he hardly seems to be the same man. I have an uneasy feeling that it isn’t wise for my sister to go with him, although it does seem the most innocent thing in the world, and the kindest, for him to stop at our house, when he has some business farther down the island, and take Isabella for a spin. She enjoys it so much and she has so few pleasures. And she and mother have such confidence in Mr. Brand that they feel sure he would never ask her to do anything that wasn’t perfectly all right. I felt that way, too, at first, but I don’t now.”
“I am glad you have spoken of it,” he replied with interest, “for I have been thinking I ought to give you some warning before Felix returns. He is simply serving a purpose of his own, an utterly selfish purpose, and he is using her to help him gain his end without the least compunction. Don’t let her go again, Miss Marne, if you can help it. I know Felix Brand through and through, and he is not to be trusted.”
Henrietta could only look at him speechless, her eyes wide with apprehension.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he hastened to assure her. “I don’t think there is anything for you to be uneasy about, except that his influence is always evil—” he paused on a raised inflection and looked at her admiringly. “One of the reasons,” he went on regardless of the abrupt change, “why I like you and feel so sure that you are sound and good and strong clear through is because you have not yielded in the least to the subtle influence he has over most people. You have held to your own ideas of what is right and wrong.”
She blushed under his eyes and his words. “I’m afraid I don’t deserve all that credit. I remember a time when I did have some ugly feelings and some tempestuous desires for pleasures that were out of my reach. But I had too many other things to do and to think about, and so I guess I outgrew them.”
“And I guess, too, that they didn’t find congenial soil in your heart to take root in,” he added. “But you needn’t be much worried about your sister, for I am sure it will not last much longer. At the best—or worst—there will not be many more opportunities—” again he straightened up and sent that triumphant glance of his alert, confident eyes out across the water—“in which it will be possible for him to work any evil. But he is so thoroughly base that if I were you I would not trust her with him again.”