“Home!” he said. “I have no home.”
“Oh, Arthur;” she answered, “why do you try to pain me? Is not my home yours also?”
So soon as they landed, he started off to “Miles’ Hotel,” to see if any letters had come for him during his absence, and returned, looking very much put out.
“What is the matter, Arthur?” asked Miss Terry, once again happy at feeling her feet upon solid soil.
“Why, those idiots at the hotel have returned a letter sent to me by my lawyer. They thought that I had left Madeira for good, and the letter was marked, ‘If left, return to Messrs. Borley and Son,’ with the address. And the mail went out this afternoon into the bargain, so it will be a month before I can get it back again.”
Had Arthur known that this letter contained clippings of the newspaper reports of the inquest on George Caresfoot, of whose death even he was in total ignorance, he would have had good reason to be put out.
“Never mind, Arthur,” said Mildred’s clear voice at his elbow—she was rarely much further from him than his shadow; “lawyers’ letters are not, as a rule, very interesting. I never yet had one that would not keep. Come and see if your pavilion—isn’t that a grand name?—is arranged to your liking, and then let us go to dinner, for Agatha here is dying of hunger—she has to make up for her abstinence at sea.”
“I was always told,” broke in that lady, “that yachting was charming, but I tell you frankly I have never been more miserable in my life than I was on board your Evening Star.”
“Never mind, dear, you shall have a nice long rest before we start for the coast of Spain.”
And so Arthur soon settled down again into the easy tenor of Madeira life. He now scarcely made a pretence of living at the hotel, since, during their cruise, Mildred had had a pavilion which stood in the garden luxuriously set up for his occupation. Here he was happy enough in a dull, numb way, and, as the days went on, something of the old light came back to his eyes, and his footfall again grew quick and strong as when it used to fall in the corridors of the Abbey House. Of the past he never spoke, nor did Mildred ever allude to Angela after that conversation at sea which had ended so strangely. She contented herself with attempting to supplant her, and to a certain extent she was successful. No man could have for very long remained obdurate to such beauty and such patient devotion, and it is not wonderful that he grew in a way to love her.