Here was a man militant. A man who must needs be fighting something, and Fate, with unusual foresight, had placed him in a position to fight Nature. Luke FitzHenry rather revelled in a night such as this - the gloom, the horror, and the patent danger of it suited his morose, combative nature. He loved danger and difficulty with the subtle form of love which a fighting man experiences for a relentless foe.
From light to light he pushed his intrepid way through the darkness and the bewildering intricacies of the Downs, and in due time, in the full sunlight of the next day, the Croonah sidled alongside the quay in the Tilbury Dock. The passengers, with their new lives before them, stumbled ashore, already forgetting the men who, smoke-begrimed and weary, had carried these lives within their hands during the last month or more. They crowded down the gangway and left Luke to go to his cabin.
There were two letters lying on the little table. One from Fitz at Mahon, the other in a handwriting which Luke had almost forgotten. He turned it over with the subtle smile of a man who has a grudge against women. But he opened it before the other.
“DEAR LUKE,--I am glad to hear from Fitz that you are making your way in the Merchant Service. He tells me that your steamer, the Croonah, has quite a reputation on the Indian route, and your fellow-officers are all gentlemen. I shall be pleased to see you to dinner the first evening you have at your disposal. I dine at seven-thirty.--Believe me, yours very truly, MARIAN HARRINGTON.
“P.S.--I shall deem it a favour if you will come in dress clothes, as I have visitors.”
And, strange to say, it was the feminine stab in the postscript that settled the matter. Luke sat down and wrote out a telegram at once, accepting Mrs. Harrington’s invitation for the same evening.
When he rang the bell of the great house in Grosvenor Gardens at precisely half-past seven that evening, he was conscious of a certain sense of elation. He was quite sure of himself.
He thought that the large drawing-room was empty when the butler ushered him into it, and some seconds elapsed before he discerned the form of a young lady in a deep chair near the fire.
The girl turned her head and rose from the chair with a smile and a certain grace of manner which seemed in some indefinite way to have been put on with her evening dress. For a moment Luke gazed at her, taken aback. Then he bowed gravely, and she burst into a merry laugh.
“How funny!” she cried. “You do not know me?”