During the second day at sea, chance arranged the introduction which Katrine had coveted with the consumptive artist, Vernon Keith. The breeze had freshened, and wrapped in a light cloak she was sitting on her chair in a sheltered corner, when a sudden gust lifted her scarf and magazine, and blew them along the deck. Involuntarily she groped in pursuit, and in so doing overbalanced and alighted in a heap, the chair, after the manner of its kind, doubling up, and following suit. It all happened with such startling unexpectedness, that for a moment Katrine sat panting and breathless, making no effort to rise. Flushed, bare-headed, white-robed, she made a charming picture, and more than one of the surrounding men dashed forward to her help, but before any one could reach her side, Vernon Keith had seized the chair, twisted it deftly into position, and held out a helping hand.
“I hope you are not hurt!”
“I—I really don’t know,” Katrine sat down, laid her head against the back of the chair, and smiled in vague, strained fashion. She stretched herself cautiously, and gradually regained composure. “No! I’m sure I am not. But it was startling...” She blushed a little beneath the watching eyes. “I—I had a book!”
“It is here,” he said, and placed it on her knee. “Is there anything I can get for you? I am sure you have had a shock. Some wine?”
“Oh, no.” The suggestion brought back the remembrance of Mrs Mannering’s hint, and awoke a determination to take advantage of the present opportunity. “I shall be quite all right, if I talk about something else, and forget myself!”
The invitation was obvious, the diffidence of the accompanying smile delightfully naïve and girl-like. Vernon Keith seated himself with obvious alacrity. Seen close at hand he looked older, more worn; there were lines about his mouth with which country-bred Katrine was unfamiliar, the irises of his eyes were faintly bloodshot. For all her inexperience she recognised that these symptoms were not the result of ill-health alone.
They talked for an hour, a pleasant, inconsequent talk, flitting from one subject to another; books, pictures, theatres, travel, and when they parted at the sound of the luncheon gong, he stood before her, gaunt and tall, and said gravely:
“Thank you for the first happy hour I have spent for months!”
“I hope we shall have many more,” Katrine had answered, confused and startled, but as she took her way to her cabin she could have found it in her heart to regret the words. “He is clever, he is interesting, he is cultivated,—but I don’t like him! There’s something in his face.—I am glad it is not he who is to look after me!” During the luncheon hour, however, her ruminations carried her to a different plane. “It doesn’t matter whether I like him or not. He is ill and lonely, and he—drinks! because he has nothing better to do. I’ll be kind to him. I’ll get Captain Bedford to be kind. Perhaps between us we can keep him straight...”
Poor Katrine! She felt a glow of satisfaction when again that evening Vernon Keith spent an hour by her side. She paced the deck with him, acutely conscious of looks of disapproval from several elderly quarters, feeling a childish sense of elation every time that the entrance to the smoke-room was passed in safety, exerting herself to start fresh subjects of interest each time the conversation flagged, but in spite of all her efforts, by half-past nine her companion grew restless, answered at random, and finally excused himself, pleading fatigue, a letter to be begun—