The gentlemen did not linger over their wine. Mayne was anxious to talk to Melicent of her future, and Lancelot was astonished at himself for the anxiety he felt to return to the drawing-room. He remembered a day when he had seen a slip of a girl seated on Tod's Trush, and how he had said to Helston: "One is conscious of a personality." He was vividly conscious of it now. It was the "indefinable something" that Melicent possessed. She never spoke much, but always gave the fascinating impression of vast reserves behind, of a boundless store from which she could give more, and always more.
He was vexed with Mrs. Helston for engaging him at some length in talk, which she did advisedly, to allow Carol to talk to the girl.
It was with interest and satisfaction that Mayne listened to her, and found out how soon she hoped to be self-supporting, and how close were the ties that bound her to her friends. There seemed no cloud upon her horizon; life, which had begun so stormily seemed, like many a rainy English morn, to be breaking out into a cloudless sky.
"But there is one thing I want to ask you about," said Melicent presently. "I have one wrinkle among my rose-leaves. It is only a little thing, yet at times I fear it I have a constant dread that ... you know who ... may turn up. I expect it is very silly of me. Men soon forget these things; and in so long a time, he is sure to have forgotten. But I have wished to see you, to make sure. I didn't like to write about it. I can't help a dreadful kind of feeling rushing over me at times, that he..." she looked round. Nobody was in hearing but Captain Brooke, idly turning over music on the piano; she dropped her voice—"that Bert Mestaer—may still think he has a claim on me."
There was a silence, which the chat of the group by the fire did not seem to break. Captain Brooke earnestly studied the song he was reading.
"That idea—the idea that Mestaer might still think of you—would not be pleasant to you?" asked Mayne.
"Pleasant?" the word was a gasp. "But you see the life that is mine now," she said tremulously. "You remember the house of bondage—the darkness and shadow of death."
"Bert Mestaer wanted to loose your bonds."
"Oh, no! Only to bind me to another master!"
"I think you wrong him there, Melicent."