CHAPTER XIII.
AN INVOLUNTARY BATH.
Strolling thus in front of the old house with its big chimneys and verandas, Lawrence thought he would go and sit down on one of those verandas: people who saw him would suppose he was enjoying the scenery, and he was conscious of an imperative desire to think calmly. That was what he had been trying to do all the way down here,—think calmly. He called himself an idiot, an unmitigated idiot, for coming at all. How should he better things by coming?
He rose from the old bench on which he had been sitting, and walked around the corner of the house. Walking, thus, he came upon a man and a woman standing there within the shade of some thick clambering vines.
The man's back was towards Lawrence but the woman's face was plain to his sight, with upraised eyes and—he could not be sure of the expression, for Prudence instantly advanced, saying, briskly:
"So nice of you, Rodney, to come, after all. Mr. Meramble was just suggesting that we go back to the launch and take a turn outside and see where Menendez and his ruffians came in."
"Capital idea," responded Lawrence, a trifle too pleasantly. "I always thought Menendez was rather overestimated as a scamp. You remember we looked the whole thing up when we came to Augustine, Prudence?"
He glanced at his wife with a most amiable expression. Meramble hastened to ask Lawrence to go in the launch, and Lawrence accepted with rather profuse thanks. He talked glibly as the three made their way to the bit of a craft, which required no work save what its owner could do himself.
Two or three times Prudence gave her husband a swift look in which perhaps there was a hint of questioning terror. She had never seen him in the least like this. She recalled, for the first time since she had heard it, the remark her Aunt Letitia had once made to the effect that Rodney had a terrible temper when he was roused, but that he usually kept it under control.
You would have said that these three people were on the best of terms with one another as they went talking and laughing down to the launch, and as they embarked and the little craft began to glide out into the open sea. Prudence afterward told some one that, as her husband looked full at her with such extremely pleasant eyes, she didn't know why she should think of Bluebeard and a few other characters noted for amiability to their wives.
At any rate, there was something in the suavity of Lawrence's manner that soon made it a great effort for Prudence to speak at all, try as she would. Her smile became constrained; her heart beat heavily. She sat under the little awning and looked at the two men.