"Then she went on to say that the news of my misfortune had preceded me; that you had already been told all there was to tell; and that it would be a kindness to you if I should agree not to see you again."
"And you did me the kindness," she put in calmly. "I ought to be thankful for that. Perhaps I am thankful."
"I was furious," I confessed. "If you will permit me to say it this long after the fact, your aunt carries a vicious tongue in her head, and she didn't spare me. Also, I'll admit that my own temper isn't exactly patient or forgiving. It was the next morning that I had the chance to go to South America thrust at me, and the ship was sailing at noon. I left a letter for you and disappeared over the horizon."
"Yes," she replied in the same even tone; "I got the letter."
"That brings us down to date," I went on, as the taxi drew up at the wharf. "The next thing is the modus vivendi—the way we must live for the next few weeks. You say that Jerry knows that we were once engaged. If he is half a man, there will be plenty of chances for misunderstanding and trouble. We must agree to be decently quarrelsome."
"You have begun it beautifully," she said, with a hard little laugh. "Admitting your premises, what will Jerry think of this taxi drive—without a chaperon?"
"Jerry will never know that you came over with me—unless you tell him."
"Aunt Mehitable can tell him," she retorted, again with the touch of malice in her voice.
"But, for the sake of Major Terwilliger's money, she won't tell him," I ventured drily; and a moment later I was handing her up the Andromeda's accommodation ladder with a sharper misery in my heart than I had suffered since the night three years in the past when her dragoness aunt had goaded me into effacing myself.
There was a pleasant bustle of impending departure already going on aboard the yacht when we reached the deck. Most of the women—all of them, in fact, save the youngest of the Van Tromp trio and Annette Grey—had gone to their several staterooms, and the men were scattered—"dotted" was Conetta's word—here and there, apparently trying to find themselves, like so many cats in a strange garret.