However, it was done. He had presented himself and, if he knew anything of human nature, if he could read a character at all, his appearance had caused considerable excitement in the minds of both Sebastian Ritherdon and Madame Carmaux.
"Do you like Sebastian?" he asked now, and he could scarcely have explained why he was anxious to hear a denial of any liking for that person on the part of Beatrix Spranger. It may have been, he thought, because this girl, with her soft English beauty, which the climate of British Honduras during some years of residence had--certainly, as yet--had no power to impair, seemed to him far too precious a thing to be wasted on a man such as Sebastian was--rough, a gambler, and possessing cruel instincts.
"Do you think I should like him?" she asked in her turn, and again the eyes which he thought were so beautiful glanced at him from beneath their thick lashes, "after what I have told you of the character he bears? What I have told you, perhaps, far too candidly, saying more than I ought to have done."
"Do not think that," he made haste to exclaim. "To-night I am going to be even more frank with Mr. Spranger. I am going to tell him one or two things in connection with my 'cousin,' when I ask him for his assistance and advice, which will make your father at least imagine that I have not formed a very favourable impression of my new-found relative."
"And mayn't I be told, too--now?" she asked, thoroughly womanlike.
"Not yet," he answered, with a smile. "Not yet. Later--perhaps."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, with something that might almost be described as a pout. "Oh! Not even after my candour about your cousin! You are a man of mystery, Lieutenant Ritherdon. Why! you won't even tell us how it happens that you arrived here from Desolada with that round your arm," and as she spoke she directed her blue eyes to a sling around his neck in which his arm reposed. "Nor that," she added, nodding now towards his forehead, where, on the left side, were affixed two or three pieces of sticking-plaster.
"Yes," he said, "I will tell you that. I feel, indeed, that I ought to do so, if only as an apology for presenting myself before you in such a guise. You see, it is so easy to explain this, that it is not worth making any mystery about it. It all comes from the fact that I am a sailor, and sailors are proverbial for being very bad riders," and as he spoke he accompanied his words with another smile.
But Beatrix did not smile in return. Instead, she said, half gravely, perhaps almost half severely: "Go on. Lieutenant Ritherdon, if you please. I wish to hear how the accident happened," while she added impressively, "on your journey from Desolada to Belize."
"I'm a bad rider," he said again, but once more meeting her glance, he altered his mode of speech and said: