It was the passion of a day. It had passed; and was now cold and dead. There was a time when the touch of that rounded arm would have sent the blood in hot current through his veins. Now its chafing against his, as they came together on the cushion, produced no more feeling than if it had been a fragment from the chisel of Praxiteles!
Did she feel the same?
He could not tell; nor cared he to know.
If he had a thought about her thoughts, it was one of simple gratitude. He remembered his own imaginings, as to who had sent the star flag to protect him, confirmed by what Blanche Vernon had let drop in that conversation in the covers.
And this alone influenced him to shape, in his own mind, the question, “Should I speak to her?”
His thoughts charged back to all that had passed between them—to her cold parting on the cliff where he had rescued her from drowning; to her almost disdainful dismissal of him in the Newport ball-room. But he remembered also her last speech as she passed him, going out at the ball-room door; and her last glance given him from the balcony!
Both words and look, once more rising into recollection, caused him to repeat the mental interrogatory, “Should I speak to her?”
Ten times there was a speech upon his tongue; and as often was it restrained.
There was time for that and more; enough to have admitted of an extended dialogue. Though the mail train, making forty miles an hour, should reach London Bridge in fifteen minutes, it seemed as though it would never arrive at the station!
It did so at length without a word having been exchanged between Captain Maynard and any of his quondam acquaintances! They all seemed relieved, as the platform appearing alongside gave them a chance of escaping from his company!