Norah Hood shook down very quietly into the neighbourhood of Mrs. Stellasis, who liked her and began to understand her. Mrs. Stellasis—a good woman and a mother—pitied Norah Hood with an increasing pity; for as the quiet Mediterranean days wore to a close she had established without doubt the fact that the engagement to the old playmate was a sordid contract entered into in all innocence by a girl worthy of a better fate. But Mrs. Stellasis hoped for the best. She thought of the “specimen” slumbering in a berth six sizes too large for it, and reflected that Norah Hood might snatch considerable happiness out of the contract after all.
“Do you know anything of the old playmate?” Mrs. Stellasis asked Dr. Ruthine suddenly one afternoon in the Red Sea.
Mark Ruthine looked into the pleasant face and saw a back to the question—many backs, extending away into a perspective of feminine speculation.
“No,” he answered slowly.
They lapsed into a little silence. And then they both looked up, and saw Norah Hood walking slowly backwards and forwards with Manly Fenn of the Guides.
After all, it was only natural that these two young persons should drift together. They were both so “quiet and stupid.” Neither had much to say to the world, and they both alike heard what the world had to say with that somewhat judicial calm which knocks down feeble wit.
There was no sparkle about either of them, and the world is given to preferring bad champagne to good burgundy because of the sparkle. The world therefore left Manly Fenn alone; and Manly Fenn, well pleased, went about his own business. It has been decreed that men who go about their own business very carefully find that it is a larger affair than they at first took it to be. Manly Fenn had never been aware until quite lately that these things which he took to be his own affairs were in reality the business of an Empire. The Empire found it out before Manly Fenn—found it out, indeed, when its faithful servant was hiring himself out as assistant-herdsman to a large farmer on the Beloochistan frontier.
And Major Fenn had to buy a new uniform, had to interview many high-placed persons, and had, finally, to present himself before his Gracious Sovereign, who hooked a little cross into the padding of his tunic—all of which matters were extremely disagreeable to Manly Fenn.
Finally, the devil—as the captain bluffly affirmed—brought it to pass that he, Manly Fenn, should take passage in the Mahanaddy on the voyage of which we have to do.
It was very sudden, and many thorough things are so. It happened somewhere in the Red Sea, and Mrs. Stellasis was probably the first to sniff danger in the breeze. That was why she asked Mark Ruthine if he knew anything about the old playmate to whom Norah Hood was engaged. That was why Mark Ruthine looked for the back of the question; for he was almost as expert as a woman among the humanities.