"Ah, but you shouldn't run such risks, my dear young lady; you really shouldn't! Now I remember a young lady whom I used to know—" And thereupon Mr. Hobhouse launched into an improbable anecdote which tried his inventive powers considerably. However, he was able to make it, and the comments thereupon lasted till they were back at the house.
The fact was that my hardihood was not quite sufficient to stand a conversation about my own self behind my own back. It might have been amusing, and it might have been instructive, but it would certainly have been embarrassing. However the incident served to reassure me that whatever she suspected me of (and I could not get that sense of being watched out of my head), it was not the correct suspicion. Had she guessed the truth I could see no point at all in her reminiscence of the mysterious stranger, unless it were sheer pointless mischief, and she did not seem a pointless lady. Besides, when I glanced at myself in the drawing room mirror, I said to myself, "Who could possibly guess!"
After that walk, tea and a talk with her father were unexciting episodes. She kept very much in the background, but when we parted I seemed to note again that flicker of a very alluring smile.
"Can it be that she has a morbid taste for inebriates?" I wondered. "One has heard of women with curiously diseased fancies. Or perhaps she has simply a passion for reforming them. One of those smiles for every sober hour would be a distinct inducement to behave!"
But this was not business and as I walked home I turned my thoughts sternly to that scythe blade.
VIII
H.M.S. Uruguay
As I neared my bleak sanatorium I said to myself,
"If only something would happen!"
Week after week spent within those walls or in wandering over this limited space of muddy roads and sodden fields, with nothing to show for it, was an unexhilarating prospect. Perhaps the recollection of the comfortable house and the pleasant company I had just left accentuated this feeling, and the swift disappearance of our glimpse of crispness and sunshine did nothing to raise the heart. In that low-lying isle one got the most extraordinary views of the weather and could see storms approaching when they were still leagues away, and portents of rain or wind hours ahead of their coming. This evening the frost had vanished, the sun was sinking into a grey-blue bank, little filaments of wind clouds were reaching all over the sky, and a stiff chilly breeze was already blowing in from the sea.