Ormsgill for the first time noticed the signs of care in Mrs. Ratcliffe's face, and the wrinkles about her eyes. Neither had, he fancied, been there when he had last seen her in England nearly five years earlier, but the change in her was as nothing compared to that in her daughter. Ada Ratcliffe was no longer a fresh and somewhat simple-minded English girl. She was a self-possessed and dignified woman of the world, but what else she might be he could not at the moment tell. He blamed himself for the desire to ascertain it, since he felt it was more fitting that he should accept her without question as the embodiment of all that was adorable. Still, he could not do it. The four years he had spent apart from her had given him too keen an insight.
"Well," he said, "there are people who believe that the possession of even a very small fortune is something of a responsibility."
"That," said Mrs. Ratcliffe, "is a mistake nowadays. There are so many excellent organized charities ready to undertake one's duties for one. They are in a position to discharge them so much more efficiently."
Ormsgill did not reply to this, though there was a faint sardonic twinkle in his eyes. He was not, as a rule, addicted to passing on a responsibility, but he remembered then that he had handed a little Belgian priest £200 to carry out a duty that had been laid on him. The fact that he had done so vaguely troubled him. Mrs. Ratcliffe, however, went on again.
"One of the disadvantages of living here is the number of invalids one is thrown into contact with," she said. "I find it depressing. You will notice the woman in the singularly unbecoming black dress yonder. She insists on drinking thick cocoa with a spoon at dinner."
One could have fancied that she felt this breach of custom to be an enormity, and Ormsgill wondered afterwards what malignant impulse suddenly possessed him. Still, the worthy lady's coldly even voice and formal manner jarred upon him, while the pleasure of meeting the girl he had thought of for four long years was much less than he felt it should have been. He resented the fact, and most men's tempers grow a trifle sharp in tropical Africa.
"Well," he said dryly, "one understands that it is nourishing, and, after all, we are to some extent cannibals."
"Cannibals?" said Mrs. Ratcliffe with a swift suspicious glance which seemed to suggest that she was wondering whether the African climate had been too much for him.
"Yes," said Ormsgill, "cocoa, or, at least, that grown in parts of Africa where the choicest comes from, could almost be considered human flesh and blood. Any way, both are expended lavishly to produce it. I fancy you will bear me out in this, Señor?"
He looked at the little, olive-faced gentleman in plain white duck who sat not far away across the table. He had grave dark eyes with a little glint in them, and slim yellow hands with brown tips to some of the fingers, and was just then twisting a cigarette between them. Ormsgill surmised that it cost him an effort to refrain from lighting it, since men usually smoke between the courses of a dinner in his country. There was a certain likeness between him and the Commandant of San Roque, sufficient at least, to indicate that they were of the same nationality, but the man at the table in the Catalina had been cast in a finer mold, and there was upon him the unmistakable stamp of authority.