“I should doubt whether any of them had such a nice face,” replied Stella with a smile.
“My word! Now, that is what I call a compliment worth having. But I hear the gentleman himself coming. Shall I repeat it to him?”
“No, please don’t, Colonel Monk. I did not mean it for compliment, only for an answer.”
“Your wish is a command; but may I make an exception in favour of Miss Porson, who prospectively owns the nice face in question? She would be delighted to know it so highly rated;” and he glanced at her sharply, the look of a man of the world who is trying to read a woman’s heart.
“By all means,” answered Stella, in an indifferent voice, but recognising in the Colonel one who, as friend or foe, must be taken into account. Then Morris came in, and they went to dinner.
Here also Colonel Monk was very pleasant. He made Stella tell the story of the shipwreck and of her rescue, and generally tried to draw her out in every possible way. But all the while he was watching and taking note of many things. Before they had been together for five minutes he observed that this couple, his son and their visitor, were on terms of extreme intimacy—intimacy so extreme and genuine that in two instances, at least, each anticipated what the other was going to say, without waiting for any words to be spoken. Thus Stella deliberately answered a question that Morris had not put, and he accepted the answer and continued the argument quite as a matter of course. Also, they seemed mysteriously to understand each other’s wants, and, worst of all, he noted that when speaking they never addressed each other by name. Evidently just then each of them had but one “you” in the world.
Now, the Colonel had not passed through very varied experiences and studied many sides and conditions of life for nothing; indeed, he would himself explain that he was able to see as far into a brick wall as other folk.
The upshot of all this was that first he thought Morris a very lucky fellow to be an object of undoubted admiration to those beautiful eyes. (It may be explained that the Colonel throughout life had been an advocate of taking such goods as the gods provided; something of a worshipper, too, at the shrine of lovely Thais.) His second reflection was that under all the circumstances it seemed quite time that he returned home to look after him.
“Now, Miss Fregelius,” he said, as she rose to leave the table, “when Morris and I have had a glass of wine, and ten minutes to chat over matters connected with his poor uncle’s death, I am going to ask you to do me a favour before I go up to smoke a cigar with your father. It is that you will play me a tune on the violin and sing me a song.”
“Did Mr. Monk tell you that I played and sang?” she asked.