“Baltazar will have a lot of things to carry,” he said, “and I must be at hand to help.”
Mrs. Renshaw pressed Linda’s hand very tenderly as they parted and a cynical observer might have been pardoned for suspecting that under the suppressed sigh with which she took Philippa’s arm there lurked a wish that it had been the more docile and less difficult child that fate had given her for a daughter.
Linda, at any rate, proved to be full of enthusiastic and excited praise for the sad-voiced lady, as the sisters went off with Rachel. She chattered, indeed, so incessantly about her that Nance, whose nerves were in no tolerant state, broke out at last into a quite savage protest.
“She’s the sort of person,” she threw in, “who’s always sentimental about young girls. Wait till you find her with some one younger than you are, and you’ll soon see! Am I not right, Rachel?”
“She’s not right at all, is she?” interposed the other. Miss Doorm looked at them gravely.
“I don’t think either of you understand Mrs. Renshaw. Indeed there aren’t many who do. She’s had troubles such as you may both pray to God you’ll never know. That wisp of a girl will be the cause of others before long.”
She glanced at Nance significantly.
“Hold tight to your Adrian, my love. Hold tight to him, my dearie!”
Thus, as they emerged upon the tow path spoke Rachel Doorm.
Meanwhile, from his watch above the Inn, the nameless Admiral saw the shadows of night settle down upon his sycamores. His faded countenance, with its defiant bravado, stared insolently at what he could catch between trees and houses, of the darkening harbour and if Rodmoor had been a ship instead of a village, and he a figurehead instead of a sign-board, he could not have confronted the unknown and all that the unknown might bring more indifferently, more casually, more contemptuously.