She looked at him with the wistful misgiving which was always stirred by his half-serious banter. "I know a hero," she said, "who is very, very dear to-day."
He met the love in her eyes with such a tender appreciation that, disregarding the windows, she had half risen to kiss him, when the head steward entering, wrinkled with smiles and suffusing the joyousness of the occasion, set a breakfast tray between them.
He greeted Lettice with the custom of an old retainer, and commented on Caragh's health as though personally responsible for its condition.
"We're all that proud of him, miss, I can tell you," he said as he withdrew with the covers.
But his flattery was spoilt for Lettice by the appearance of a meal which declared the newness of the morning with such emphasis.
"Was it awful, coming at such an hour?" she begged of Caragh.
"Shocking," he said unmoved; "five minutes earlier and you'd have found me in my bath."
"Oh!" she groaned; "I wish I'd waited for you on shore."
"In that case," he said, "I should probably have never landed."
"Never landed!"