Chatterton, receiving no answer, retired to what he called his study, where they heard him banging books about. Lilian sat silent with hands crossed in her lap. She, also, she fancied, had seen the shadow in Carsluith Maxwell's face, and she felt both troubled and anxious about him and about somebody else.
A week later Mrs. Chatterton, entering her niece's room in search of some trifle, came upon a book the girl had been reading. She looked thoughtful when she saw that the volume treated of travels in West Africa, and that the marker in it rested between the last pages.
CHAPTER VII
A WARNING
It was a bright morning when the S.S. Manyamba rolled south into sight of the Canaries over a white-flecked sea. They rose rather like dim blue clouds than islands athwart the far horizon, with one glistening cone cut off by silver mists from the ocean plain beneath, towering high above the loftiest. Maxwell leaned over the poop rails, while Dane, the middle-aged purser, and Miss Bonita Castro stood near by. The lady's father, a little, olive-faced Portuguese, with shifty black eyes, lounged in a deck chair watching them languidly. There were few passengers on board, and the members of the group, who had made friends somewhat rapidly, were now amusing themselves by shooting at the bottles a steward forward flung into the sea.
A big pistol flashed in Miss Castro's hand. The purser clutched at a stanchion and uttered a quick exclamation; Maxwell wheeled round suddenly. A bottle, ceasing its gyrations, sank into the white wash of the screw, and the lady laughed as she lowered the pistol muzzle.
"Trés!" she cried exultantly. "That is three to me! Carramba! I have also it seem, as you say, nearly bag the Señor Maxwell."
If Dom Pedro Castro was a typical Portuguese, his wife had been an Andalusian, and his daughter, while speaking several languages rather prettily than well, preferred her mother's tongue, and had inherited a full share of the voluptuous beauty of a race whose women are famous in Spain. She formed an interesting picture as she stood with the blue of the sea behind her, laughter in her dark eyes, and the pistol still smoking in her hand. They were remarkably attractive eyes; and Maxwell, knowing what to look for, saw more than Dane had apparently seen in their depths, and decided to warn his comrade to beware of them. A faint carmine warmth emphasized the comeliness of the slightly dusky face, while graceful pose and figure were both characteristic of a woman of her extraction as yet well short of the age at which Southern beauty changes into grossness.
"You have not the fright, Señor Maxwell, though a little nearer and we leave you behind?" she added naively.
Maxwell did not look frightened, though he might well have been, for the bullet had passed him close. He answered with a smile which, as Dane had noticed before, appeared to linger on his lips after the gravity had returned to his eyes.