Oh, Stevan, Stevan, had he too fathomed that wonderful secret!
“Ah!” Mrs Lascelles said again; “that of course decides it.”
“Mother, you are sure you are not ill?” said the girl, anxiously.
There was a hesitation in her mother’s words which made her uneasy, so unlike was it to her usual prompt and brisk decision. But she shook off the question with more of her ordinary manner.
“Ill? Not in the least. It has been a little bewildering, that is all. The waves of the Atlantic do hit rather hard. I don’t see any bell; shall we go down and find out if the carriage is ready?”
But at this moment there arrived two massive white cups full of steaming coffee, and news that they might start whenever they wished. Everitt was waiting for them when they went down, and Mrs Lascelles went up to him at once.
“Kitty,” she said, cordially, “tells me I have been very ungrateful—indeed, that we have been ungrateful all through, at any rate now, when it appears we owe you our lives.”
He coloured.
“Your lives!” he repeated, in amazement.
“Yes, indeed,” she said, smiling; “and you mustn’t say it’s nothing, because at this moment it seems to me a very great deal.”