He was at Havre when the Cayman arrived, with Montesma and his tawny-visaged crew on board, no one else.
'You may examine every corner of your ship,' Montesma cried, scornfully, when Smithson came on board and swore that Lesbia must be hidden somewhere in the vessel. 'The bird has flown: she will shelter in neither your nest nor in mine, Smithson. You have lost her—and so have I. We may as well be friends in misfortune.'
He was haggard, livid with grief and anger. He looked ten years older than he had looked the other night at the ball, when his dash and swagger, and handsome Spanish head had been the admiration of the room.
Smithson was very angry, but he was not a fighting man. He had enjoyed various opportunities for distinguishing himself in that line in the island of Cuba; but he had always avoided such opportunities. So now, after a good deal of bluster and violent language, which Montesma took as lightly as if it had been the whistling of the wind in the shrouds, poor Smithson calmed down, and allowed Gomez de Montesma to leave the yacht, with his portmanteaux, unharmed. He meant to take the first steamer for the Spanish Main, he told Smithson. He had had quite enough of Europe.
'I daresay it will end in your marrying her,' he said, at the last moment. 'If you do, be kind to her.'
His voice faltered, choked by a sob, at those last words. After all, it is possible for a man without principle, without morality, to begin to make love to a woman in a mere spirit of adventure, in sheer devilry, and to be rather hard hit at the last.
Horace Smithson sailed his yacht back to Cowes without loss of time, and sent his card to Lord Maulevrier on board the Philomel. His lordship replied that he would wait upon Mr. Smithson that afternoon at four o'clock, and at that hour Maulevrier again boarded the Cayman; but this time very quietly, as an expected guest.
The interview that followed was very painful. Mr. Smithson was willing that this unhappy episode in the life of his betrothed, this folly into which she had been beguiled by a man of infinite treachery, a man of all other men fatal to women, should be forgotten, should be as if it had never been.
'It was her very innocence which made her a victim to that scoundrel,' said Smithson, 'her girlish simplicity and Lady Kirkbank's folly. But I love your sister too well to sacrifice her lightly, Lord Maulevrier; and if she can forget this midsummer madness, why, so can I.'
'She cannot forget, Mr. Smithson,' answered Maulevrier, gravely. 'She has done you a great wrong by listening to your false friend's addresses; but she did you a still greater wrong when she accepted you as her husband without one spark of love for you. She and you are both happy in having escaped the degradation, the deep misery of a loveless union. I am glad—yes, glad even of this shameful escapade with Montesma—though it has dragged her good name through the gutter,—glad of the catastrophe that has saved her from such a marriage. You are very generous in your willingness to forget my sister's folly. Let your forgetfulness go a step further, and forget that you ever met her.'