And so the last hour of the last evening had come around, and his last chance to speak with her had gone! He knew how it would be on the morrow. Nothing less conducive to an exposition of the tender passion in any of its phases can be found than the landing on a foggy day at Liverpool, with its crowds and coal smoke, its lowering skies, and dingy surroundings, its hustling porters and watermen, the rush and rumble of a great industrial city beginning at the water's edge, after the inspiring solitudes of three thousand miles of salt water.
He would see her only amid a confusion of sights and sounds that would effectually prevent any but the most banal phrases of adieu. She would pass away from him and become as had all the other women he had met, like the dissolving foam wreaths in their track across the Atlantic. He was annoyed with himself for feeling it so much. The thing was out of all reason. Perhaps, after he had speech with her once more, he might better realize what an ass he had been to imagine she cared for him. Things, in short, would adjust themselves on a common-sense footing.
But he could not get speech with her. An overture to that effect, somewhat clumsily conveyed before dinner-time, had been rejected by Miss Winstanley in such terms that Clandonald felt vexed and mortified, wondering what or who could have set her so against him.
And here, at last, when he stepped out on deck, into the glare of the electric lights, intending to return to his own room and prosaically go to bed, the Fates would have it that he ran upon Mr. Winstanley shivering like a true Southron in the raw atmosphere around the ship's anchorage, his daughter clinging to his arm, looking most lovely in her furs, her cheeks of a vivid carmine, the little locks on her forehead drifting and curving in the moist air.
"Pretty dismal lookout, isn't it?" said the old gentleman cheerily. "Kind o' evenin' that makes one think o' a tumbler full of hot Scotch, and a big snappin' wood-fire, with a couple o' little darkies tumblin' over each other to bring in the fat pine knots."
"If I could fly with the crow over in that direction," said Clandonald, pointing toward the invisible shore, "I know of a hearthside not far off, where at least part of those conditions would be fulfilled to me! It is in the house of an uncle of mine, where as a boy I considered it Paradise to go, and still do, sometimes for the shooting. One of those homes of merry England (a misnomer now, I grant you) that you have expressed so kind a desire to see, Miss Winstanley. I sincerely hope, by the way, that you haven't forgotten your promise to persuade Mr. Winstanley to give me a day at Beaumanoir, and that you'll settle upon a date with Miss Carstairs—who has also agreed to honor me—before we leave the ship."
"You are very kind, but our plans are undecided," said the girl, in a low, tremulous tone.
"Seems as if the sea hadn't agreed with daughter this little bit," observed Mr. Winstanley. "She sort o' thinks she'll stop by a few days, along the road, before we get to London. So this is a British fog? A No. 1, I reckon. I hope you won't think me impolite if I call it a regular searcher, sir. At this moment I feel it in the marrow o' my bones. But anything to please the ladies, and when Posey said she'd a headache that wouldn't leave her till she got a turn outside, out we came to admire your English coast scenery, I tell her—Great Scott, Posey, I've gone and done it, now!"
He had been fumbling in his breast pocket for a handkerchief, and drew forth the missing article with a vexed look upon his mild old face.
"Done what, daddy?"