“To excuse myself for coming when you called upon me, Reine.”
“Ah! but I did not call you. I never should have ventured. Everard, you are doing me injustice. How could I have taken so much upon myself?”
“I wish you would take a great deal more upon yourself. You did, Reine. You said, ‘Stand in my place.’ ”
“Yes, I know; my heart was breaking. Forgive me, Everard. Whom could I ask but you?”
“I will forgive you anything you like, if you say that. And I did take your place, Reine. I did not want to, mind you—I wanted to be with you, not Bertie—but I did.”
“Everard, you are kind, and so cruel. Thanks! thanks a thousand times!”
“I do not want to be thanked,” he said, standing over her; for she had drawn her hand from his arm, and was standing by the steep stairs which led below, ready for escape. “I don’t care for thanks. I want to be rewarded. I am not one of the generous kind. I did not do it for nothing. Pay me, Reine!”
Reine looked him in the face very sedately. I do not think that his rudeness alarmed, or even annoyed her, to speak of. A gleam of malice came into her eyes; then a gleam of something else, which was, though it was hard to see it, a tear. Then she suddenly took his hand, kissed it before Everard had time to stop her, and fled below. And when she reached the safe refuge of the ladies’ cabin, where no profane foot could follow her, Reine took off her hat, and shook down her hair, which was all blown about by the wind, and laughed to herself. When she turned her eyes to the dismal little swinging lamp overhead, that dolorous light reflected itself in such glimmers of sunshine as it had never seen before.
How gay the girl felt! and mischievous, like a kitten. Pay him! Reine sat down on the darksome hair-cloth sofa in the corner, with wicked smiles curling the corners of her mouth; and then she put her hands over her face, and cried. The other ladies, poor souls! were asleep or poorly, and paid no attention to all this pantomime. It was the happiest moment she had had for years, and this is how she ran away from it; but I don’t think that the running away made her enjoy it the less.
As for Everard, he was left on deck feeling somewhat discomfited. It was the second time this had happened to him. She had kissed his hand before, and he had been angry and ashamed, as it was natural a man should be, of such an inappropriate homage. He had thought, to tell the truth, that his demand for payment was rather an original way of making a proposal; and he felt himself laughed at, which is, of all things in the world, the thing most trying to a lover’s feelings. But after awhile, when he had lighted and smoked a cigar, and fiercely perambulated the deck for ten minutes, he calmed down, and began to enter into the spirit of the situation. Such a response, if it was intensely provoking, was not, after all, very discouraging. He went downstairs after awhile (having, as the reader will perceive, his attack of the love-sickness rather badly), and looked at Herbert, who was extended on another dismal sofa, similar to the one on which Reine indulged her malice, and spread a warm rug over him, and told him the hour, and that “we’re getting on famously, old fellow!” with the utmost sweetness. But he could not himself rest in the dreary cabin, under the swinging lamp, and went back on deck, where there was something more congenial in the fresh air, the waves running high, the clouds breaking into dawn.