“I don’t mind being the topic of discussion so long as I’m present,” commented the Reverend Smith Boyd, glancing around the group as if in search of some one.
“It rather restricts the conversation,” Mrs. Helen Davies observed, at the same time watching, with a smile, the tableau of her sister Grace and Jim Sargent. Gail and herself had taken Grace out shopping, and had forced on her sedate taste a neat and “fetching” yachting costume, from flowing veiled cap to white shoes, which had dropped about twenty years from her usual appearance, and had brought a renewed enthusiasm to the eyes of her husband.
The cherub-cheeked Marion Kenneth glanced wistfully over at the rail where Dick Rodley, vieing with the sunset in splendour, stood chatting with easy Ted Teasdale and the stiff Gerald Fosland.
“Where’s Gail?” demanded the cherub-cheeked one.
“It’s time that young lady was up on deck,” decided Arly, and rose.
“She’s probably taking advantage of the opportunity to dress for dinner,” surmised Mrs. Davies. “In fact, I think it’s a good idea for all of us,” but the sunset was too potent to leave for a few moments, and she sat still.
Where indeed was Gail? In her beautiful little curly maple stateroom, sitting on the edge of a beautiful little curly maple bed, and digging two small fists into the maple-brown coverlet. The pallor of the morning had not yet left her face, and there were circles around the brown eyes which gave them a wan pathos; there was a crease of pain and worry, too, in the white brow.
Gail had come to the greatest crisis in her life. To begin with, Allison. She would not permit herself to dwell on the most horrible part of her experience with him. That she put out of her mind, as best she could, with a shudder. She hoped, in the time to come, to be free of the picture of him as he advanced slowly towards her in the music room, with that frenzied glare in his eyes and that terrifying evil look upon his face. She hoped, in the time to come, to be free of that awful fear which seemed to have gripped her heart with a clutch that had left deep imprints upon it, but, just now, she let the picture and the fear remain before her eyes and in her heart, and centred upon her grave responsibilities.
So far she had told no one of what had occurred that morning. When she had rushed into the rector’s study he had sprung up, and, seeing the fright in her face and that she was tottering and ready to fall, he had caught her in his strong arms, and she had clung trustfully to him, half faint, until wild sobs had come to her relief. Even in her incoherence, however, even in her wild disorder of emotion, she realised that there was danger, not only to her but to every one she loved, in the man from whom she had run away; and she could not tell the young rector any more than that she had been frightened. Had she so much as mentioned the name of Allison, she instinctively knew that the Reverend Smith Boyd, in whom there was some trace of impetuosity, might certainly have forgotten his cloth and become mere man, and have strode straight across to the house before Allison could have collected his dazed wits; and she did not dare add that encounter to her list of woes. It was strange how instinctively she had headed for the Reverend Smith Boyd’s study; strange then, but not now. In that moment of flying straight to the protection of his arms, she knew something about herself, and about the Reverend Smith Boyd, too. She knew now why she had refused Howard Clemmens, and Willis Cunningham, and Houston Van Ploon, and Dick Rodley; poor Dick! and Allison, and all the others. She frankly and complacently admitted to herself that she loved the Reverend Smith Boyd, but she put that additional worry into the background. It could be fought out later. She would have been very happy about it if she had had time, although she could see no end to that situation but unhappiness.
These threats of Allison’s. How far could he go with them, how far could he make them true? All the way. She had a sickening sense that there was no idleness in his threats. He had both the will and the power to carry them out. He would bankrupt her family; he would employ slander against her, from which the innocent have less defence than the guilty; he would set himself viciously to wreck her happiness at every turn. The long arm of his vindictiveness would follow her to her home, and set a barrier of scandalous report even between her and her friends.