“Oh,” she said, with tears in her eyes, “if I could only believe you to be my friend.”
“Miss Fordibras,” I said, “believe it now because I tell you so. Your friend whatever may befall. Please to call me that.”
I think that she was about to confess to me the whole story of her life. I have always thought that it might have been so at that moment. But the words remained unspoken—for a shadow fell upon us as we talked, and, looking up, I perceived the figure of a man so near to us that his outstretched hand could have touched my own. And instantly perceiving it also, she broke away from me and begged me to take her to the Casino.
“Miss Aston will be anxious,” she cried, excited upon compulsion. “Please let us go. It must be nine o’clock.”
I rejoined that I was quite in ignorance of the fact; but, taking her cue, I led the way from the place and turned toward the Casino. The light of an arc lamp as we went showed me her young face as pale as the moonbeams upon the still sea before us. I understood that the man had been watching her, and that she was afraid of him. Indeed, no artifice could conceal so plain a fact.
Of this, however, she would not speak at all. In the Casino, she went straight to the side of the formidable Miss Aston, and began to babble some idle excuse for our delay. McShanus himself was playing at Petits Chevaux and making the room ring with his exclamations. I understood that the hour for confidence had passed, and that the words she had meant to speak to me might go for ever unspoken.
Was it well that this should be? God knows. The path of my duty lay clearly marked before me. Not even the hand of Joan Fordibras must turn me aside therefrom. I could but hope that time would lift the shadows and let me see the sun beyond them.
CHAPTER VIII.
WE VISIT AFRICA.
The Voyage of the “White Wings.”