'In anything beyond that,' continued Alison, 'you perhaps do me honour, but in any instance I can never love where I do not respect and esteem.'
'And have I forfeited your esteem?'
'Yes.'
'In what way?'
'By trepanning me on board this yacht—away from home and my friends!'
'Friends at Aldershot,' thought Cadbury, as he laughed to himself and said,
'But why so severe a term as trepanning?'
'You led me to believe when we quitted Chilcote in such hot haste that instant flight alone in this vessel would save papa from arrest through certain bills which he says he saw you destroy. So you and he—he,' she added, with a heavy sob—'have both deceived me, and now I believe neither of you. It was a vile trick on the part of you both to separate me from Captain Goring.'
Cadbury had reckoned at least upon her gratitude for taking up the bills of Slagg, as he had to some extent won that of her father; but even this plan failed to serve him, and so far as Alison was concerned he might as well have thrown his money into the sea. The name of his rival on her lips infuriated him, and he tugged at his long, white horse-shoe moustache viciously, as he thought that he had played what he deemed his trump card, and yet lost after all!
He gave her a glance of a rather mingled nature and retreated to the deck, where his discomposure of face and manner was so apparent to Sir Ranald that, after a few words of explanation, the latter sought the cabin to remonstrate with the unfortunate and weary Alison.