“It would have been too great a privilege. But my luck never permits arrant good fortune like that to be mine.”
She looked at me curiously, and sighed a little restlessly, turning away to watch the cloud of mollies that skipped about our stern. There was silence between us for a minute.
“I prefer captains to peers,” she said at last, with a little laugh. “I don’t think you’re improved.”
“It’s a prejudice you’ll have to overcome, won’t you?” said I. “Denvarre——” but as I mentioned his name he came on deck, and spying us, walked up and joined us.
The two smiled into each other’s eyes pleasantly enough, but—but something was wanting. Gwen never had been what one would call a sentimental girl, though at times—but that was ages ago. I left them to stroll off together, while I marched forward again, musing over the very level-headed way in which she treated her engagement and her fiancé. For I had imagined she would look at the matter differently. We had been such old—well, comrades, that I’d expected to be told of her happiness, and by her own lips too. It would have prevented all the sense of strangeness that had somehow got between us. I shouldn’t have whined or referred to old times—she must have known that. I could only repeat to myself that women were beyond my finite understanding, and continued to take a miserable and utterly useless pleasure in the fact that at any rate she did not worship the ground that Denvarre trod.
Gerry was smoking a gloomy pipe over the stern, and I joined him. He kept his face studiously averted from mine, and I had to lay my hand upon his shoulder before I spoke.
“Poor old chap,” said I sympathetically. “Have they broken it to you?”
“The old woman has,” he answered, adding a crisp execration which should never be used in connection with a lady.
“Well,” said I, trying to look into his eyes, “it’ll soon be over, old man. If Eccles can get steam, we’ll be back at the Falklands in ten days’ time. And we must buck each other up,” I added, trying to be cheerful.
“I didn’t think it of Vi,” burst out the poor lad with an air of desperate aggrievement. “Not that I believe she cares the flick of a finger for him now. It’s that old hag of a mother that’s done it.”