"It is only John," she said happily. "He knows—about us. He confirmed my suspicions that you were torturing yourself with this silly idea that he and I were in love. He even foretold that you would pretend to be the bold, bad man of old. John is wise, you see, wiser even than you. But not half so——"
And then John walked in and read their faces at a glance.
CHAPTER XXI
But, after all, Rodrigo sailed for Italy the next Saturday. Though he had changed his booking from a single to a double cabin and the passenger list read: The Count and Countess Rodrigo di Torriani.
John Dorning, looking almost as radiant as the bride and groom, saw them off at the pier. For a long time they stood chatting on the deck of the great vessel together, these three young people amid the throng of waving, shouting tourists. When the warning blasts sounded from the smokestack whistle, John whispered banteringly to Rodrigo, "This time you will not call upon any of your ex-lady friends, eh? Rosa or Sophie—you bet I was glad to get that good news of Sophie. Well, cable me when you land. And please come back on schedule. You are leaving Dorning and Son terribly handicapped, you know—my two best partners away at once." He kissed Mary and pressed Rodrigo's hand, and hurried down the gangplank. He stood there, a thin, but sturdy figure, waving to them while the great ship backed out into the channel and pointed her bow toward the east.
"John Dorning is the finest of all the men that ever lived," Rodrigo said solemnly.
"Almost," Mary replied.
Gliding through the magic moonlight over a mirror-like sea, they sat very close to each other that evening in deck-chairs, and she said to him, at the end of a long conversation, "And that is why I love you most, Rodrigo—because you have conquered yourself."
"And so has good old John," he replied.