“Personally, no. Monotony has not been my cross. When a man is knocking about the world he is inclined to envy the people who can vegetate peacefully at home, but thirty-six years of stagnation is a killing business!” He looked down at her with steady scrutiny. “I am glad you had courage to cut yourself free before it came to that point.”
“But I am different... I told you so. I had my work,” protested Katrine, flushing, “and moreover something did happen. Fate came to my aid, and practically forced me away!”
“Yes?”
Once more Bedford leaned his elbows on the rail, and bent towards her with a keen interrogative glance. “Is it permissible to ask in what form?”
Why on earth need she blush? Katrine mentally railed at herself, but the more she fumed the hotter blazed the colour in her cheeks. Plying such a flag of betrayal it seemed obviously absurd to reply by a prim: “My brother married, and no longer required my services,” and in Bedford’s equally prim “Quite so,” the scepticism seemed thinly veiled. There was silence for several moments, while both gazed fixedly ahead. Without looking in his direction Katrine knew exactly the expression which her companion’s face would wear. The lips closed tight, drooping slightly to one side. The chin dropped, the eyes unnaturally grave. Strange how clearly his changes of expression had already stamped themselves upon her mental retina! She knew how he would look, what she could not guess was what he would think ... What would he think! That preposterous blush would surely suggest a reason more personal than a brother’s marriage. A love affair, a lover, but mercifully a lover in England, since she had already explained that Jack Middleton and his wife were her sole friends in India. Yes! that would be the explanation, a persistent lover—a lover who had been refused, a lover left behind to recover at his ease. Katrine’s self-possession was restored by this assurance. Certainly she had had lovers... She adopted what was evidently intended to be an “Isabel Carnaby air,” and demanded lightly:
“And now, Captain Bedford, it is your turn to confess your troubles.”
“I have none,” he said instantly. He looked full into her face with his twinkling eyes. “Or if I had—I have forgotten.”