"By your leave!" growled a hoarse voice at his elbow, for at this interesting juncture the conversation was interrupted by three or four able seamen coiling a gigantic cable about the lady's feet. She was forced to abandon her position, and leave to her companion's fancy the nature of her reply. No doubt it would have been guarded, appropriate, and to the point. Daisy had nothing for it, however, but to collect her different effects, and strap them together in proper order for landing, before he ran down to fetch certain articles of his own personal property out of the cabin.
They were in smooth water now. Pale faces appeared from the different recesses opening on the saloon. People who had been sick tried to look as if they had been sleeping and the sleepers as if they had been wide-awake all the way from Holyhead. A child who cried incessantly during the passage, now ran laughing in and out of the steward's pantry; and two sporting gentlemen from the West—one with a bright blue coat, the other with a bright red face—finished their punch at a gulp, without concluding a deal that had lasted through six tumblers, for a certain "bay brown harse by Elvas—an illigant lepped wan," to use the red-faced gentleman's own words, "an' the bouldest ever ye see. Wait till I tell ye now. He's fit to carry the Lord-Liftinint himself. Show him his fence, and howld him if ye can!" As the possible purchaser for whom blue-coat acted, was a timid rider hunting in a blind country, it seemed doubtful whether so resolute an animal was likely to convey him as temperately as he might wish.
"Ah! it's the Captain," exclaimed both these sitters in a breath, as Daisy slid behind them in search of his dressing-case and his tall hat. "See now, Captain, will the mare win? Faith, she's clean-bred, I know well, for I trained her dam meself, whan she cleaned out the whole south of Ireland at Limerick for the Ladies' Plate!" exclaimed one.
"You ride her, Captain," added the other. "It's herself that can do't! They've a taste of temper, have all that breed; but you sit still, an' ride aisy, Captain. Keep her back till they come to race and loose her off then like shot from a gun. Whew! She'll come out in wan blaze, and lave thim all behind, as I'd lave that tumbler there, more by token it's been empty this ten minutes. Ye'll take a taste of punch now, Captain, for good luck, and to drink to the black mare's chance?"
But Daisy excused himself, shaking hands repeatedly with his cordial well-wishers ere he hurried on deck to disembark.
Moving listlessly and languidly into upper air, the figure of a lady preceded him by a few steps. All he saw was the corner of a shawl, the skirt of a dress, and a foot and ankle; but that foot and ankle could only belong to Blanche Douglas, and in three bounds he was at her side. A moment before, she had been pale, languid, dejected. Now, she brightened up into all the flush and brilliancy of her usual beauty, like a fair landscape when the sun shines out from behind a cloud. Mrs. Lushington, standing opposite the companion-way, noted the change. Daisy, in happy ignorance, expressed the pleasure, which no doubt he felt, at a meeting with his handsome friend on the Irish shore.
No woman, probably, likes anything she does like one whit the worse because deprived of it by force of circumstances. The fox in the fable that protested the grapes were sour, depend upon it, was not a vixen. Satanella thoroughly appreciated her friend's kindness and consideration, when Mrs. Lushington condoled with her on her past sufferings, and rejoiced in her recovery, informing her at the same time that Daisy was a capital travelling companion.
"He takes such care of one, my dear." (She spoke in a very audible aside.) "So gentle and thoughtful; it's like having one's own maid. I enjoyed the crossing thoroughly. Poor dear! I wish you could have been on deck to enjoy it too!"
Done into plain English, the above really meant—"I have been having great fun flirting with your admirer. He's very nice, and perhaps I shall take him away from you some day when I have a chance."
By certain twinges that shot through every nerve and fibre, Blanche Douglas knew she had let her foolish heart go out of her own keeping. If she doubted previously whether or not she had fallen in love with Daisy, she was sure of it now, while wrung by these pangs of an unreasoning jealousy, that grudged his society for an hour, even to her dearest friend.