"What barefaced admiration," he says, within himself. "The young dandy is falling in love with my wife, confound him!"
[CHAPTER XVI.]
At a rather early hour the next morning, Mr. Charteris is astir, and out upon the sands.
Not so early as some others, though, he finds, for in a merry group of young people on the sands, he meets Sir George Wilde in close proximity to Reine. Vane, giving them a careless good-morning, passes on to some little distance, where he pauses with folded arms, and a slightly sulky aspect, to look out over the wide waste of heaving sea, his shapely back turned resolutely on the merry-makers.
"Confound the fellow's impudence," he remarks to himself, with needless savagery. "How he follows her around. Of course she would rather be with me. She loves me, or pretends to."
Why he should feel vexed at Sir George's monopoly of his, Vane's, unloved bride he could not explain to himself. Yet the feeling is there.
Glancing furtively over his shoulder, and seeing the undeniably handsome and well-matched pair strolling on side by side, creates a feeling of decided ill-humor within him.
"It is quite a flirtation," he tells himself. "Reine should know better, being a married woman. But perhaps she has taken a fancy to the fellow. Perhaps she was mistaken in the notion that she cared for me. She had seen no one else then. But now, meeting this handsome, spoony young baronet, she may regret this nasty marriage as much as I do."
While these thoughts flash through his mind, the gay hum of voices die away. The party have gone out of sight, and a sudden resolution comes into Vane's mind.