"When I come to you with a definite proposal, sir, I shall naturally endeavour to satisfy you," was his long-delayed reply.
It was lame enough, but it served its immediate purpose of staving off the day of reckoning. For Montague Maynard rose abruptly from the table, flinging down his napkin with a gesture of impatience, and obviously restraining an impulse to press his guest for a declaration of his intentions.
"Come and join the ladies," he said curtly.
An uncomfortable half-hour had followed in the drawing-room, the air vibrant with an electric tension which all were conscious of, and, as is customary on such occasions, increased by their fatuous efforts to relieve it. Violet talked brilliantly—more brilliantly than usual, perhaps—of things that did not matter, watching her father and lover with a pained surprise which her brave efforts could not wholly conceal. Aunt Sarah seized such opportunities as were offered to her of being openly rude to every one in turn, nodding her priceless lace cap to emphasize her points, stabbing her lean fingers at the successive victims of her caustic tongue, and galvanizing her mummy-like face into grimaces that would have terrified strangers.
But, so far as Leslie was concerned, it was reserved for the old lady to save the situation. When she got up to go she followed Mr. Maynard and Violet into the hall to speed the parting guest, winding up a stilted evening with the request that Mr. Chermside would take her and her great-niece on what she called "the water" the next day. She and Violet would motor out to the Ottermouth beach, and meet him there at 11.30 if "the elements were propitious."
Leslie had, of course, consented, though he had to conceal a certain amount of reluctance in doing so. After Mr. Maynard's plain speech he was not sure if it was not his duty to refrain from seeing Violet again. At any rate the time had come when he must quit the fool's paradise in which he had been living since the scene in the rose-garden, and seriously consider his position. But Miss Dymmock's request was a command, and it had this merit—that whatever course he decided on he would have one more hour in the company of his beloved.
Now, as he went to keep the appointment, he was no nearer a solution of his dilemma in spite of anxious deliberation through the long hours of a sleepless night. He was prepared to suffer the pain of giving Violet up, but from her own sweet confession he knew that in vanishing from her life he would inflict upon her a pain equal to his own. He shrank from dealing the cruel blow. And, again, the necessity of guarding her against the plot which he was all too sure was hatching in Nugent's brain was a strong inducement to remain on the spot as long as possible.
Racked with indecision, he loitered on the parade and absent-mindedly watched the bathers till one of the Maynard motor cars swept round the corner by the coastguard station, pulling up opposite the boat which the fisherman in his employ had in readiness. He thought that Violet looked pale and preoccupied as she stepped from the car, but Aunt Sarah was as alert and determined as ever, and, hardly deigning a word of greeting, started across the pebbly beach for the boat. Leslie and Violet followed, the sight of the little old lady's spindle shanks, as she trudged over the stones with skirts held high, for the moment taking them out of themselves.
A little later the boat was running eastward round the headland at the river's mouth before a gently favouring breeze. The wind being steady and the sea smooth, the boatman was left behind, Violet taking the helm and Leslie minding the sheet. Aunt Sarah, settled comfortably forward of the little stick of a mast, spent the first five minutes in a careful scrutiny of the sky, and then, finding that there were no outward evidences that she was to be drowned that morning, suddenly astounded her shipmates with the exclamation—
"You two are in love with each other, and you can't deny it!"