“I can only help you so far as the Ravenhills are concerned. They will push on to Osen.”
“And you?”
“Oh, I, of course.”
“You were mistaken, then,” said Anne triumphantly, “in supposing that we follow the same route. We stop at Sand.”
He laughed. “Pardon me. Sand or Osen are practically the same thing. We meet on the same steamer to-morrow morning.”
“Oh!” She reflected again. “There is no help for it, then. Except—”
Wareham waited.
“I trust to you not to take advantage,” she said, in a hurried tone, and with a movement of the head which he interpreted as his dismissal.
Instead of rejoining the Ravenhills he stood solitary, and thought over the conversation. What ground had been won or lost between two antagonists’? He had made it plain to Miss Dalrymple that he was on his friends’ side, and she had let him know that the meeting was disagreeable to her. So far there was equality. But though he had not disguised his feelings, he could not flatter himself that he had caused Anne the slightest embarrassment. And there was vexation in the thought that their first movement had been towards sympathy, so that he remembered a throb of satisfaction on hearing her exclamation by his side. He remembered, too, and dwelt upon, the expression of her look—which said more than words—the brow slightly contracted, the eyes fixed, the strong pitiful curve of her lips. In spite of his prejudice, she was beautiful. Hugh’s raptures had inspired him with contradictory views, but he told himself now that there was no reason to be unfair, and that a lover might very well lose his head over fewer charms. Disapproval, contempt, perhaps, were as strong as ever, and proof against a woman’s face. Yet something in his own thoughts irritated him, and he turned from them to talk to a tall German, whose wife and children were ensconced in the warmest corner of the deck.