“And listen, B. V.—there’s a man going round by Japan to Canada, a man called Martin Welland. I should like you to know him for two reasons. First, he can tell you all about this place. Second, I think he is interesting. If you don’t find him so, shunt him. My love, my dear B. V., and do come. Think of all you might do with this as a starting point.”
There was more, but that is the essential. You may think at this point that you know exactly how this story must inevitably end. But no.
It was about four months after this that Beatrice Veronica was rung up on the telephone in her veranda as she sat reading. The imperative interruption annoyed her;—she put down her book. A man’s voice.
“Miss Leslie? I think your friend Mrs. Mourilyan told you I was coming to Victoria. My name is Welland.”
Polite assurances from the veranda.
“Yes, I am staying at the Empress. May I come out and see you this afternoon? I have a small parcel for you from Mrs. Mourilyan.”
So it was settled, and with her Chinese servant she made the little black oak table beautiful with silver and long-stemmed flowers in beautiful old English glass bowls. If he went back to Yercaud he should at least tell Sidney that her home in “that cold country” was desirable.
He came at four and she could hear his voice in the little hall as Wing admitted him.
She liked it. The words were clear, well-cut, neither blurred nor bungled. Then he came in. A tall man, broad-shouldered, with grey eyes and hair that sprang strongly from a broad forehead, clean-shaven, a sensitive mouth, possibly thirty-eight, or so. All these things flashed together in an impression of something to be liked and trusted. On his side he saw a young woman in a blue-grey gown with hazel eyes and hair to match—a harmony of delicate browns enhancing an almond-pale face with faintly coloured lips and a look of fragility which belied the nervous strength beneath.
The parcel was given and received; a chain of Indian moonstones in silver, very lovely in its shifting lights, and then came news, much news, of the home at Yercaud.