He opened the door of the cabin. “Be so good as to accompany the duchess, Mr. Evans,” he said to his skipper; and he went back into the cabin and closed and bolted the door.
The faint, sweet scent of wild-rose essence was on the air and on the table where her coat had been lying. He dropped into the chair where she had sat, and, leaning his head on his hands, sobbed like a child.
She went back over the harbor-water talking pleasantly with Evans. “My brother grows such a hermit,” she said to him. “It is a great pity that he avoids society. He is becoming quite morose.”
“Morose? No, your Grace,” said the old man, who adored his owner. “But it is certain his lordship leads a lonesome life. When we’re in any port, he don’t go ashore o’ nights to sup and play and lark as other gentlemen do. But there aren’t his equal for goodness and kindness, madam, anywhere; no, not in the ’varsal world.”
“It is very nice of you to say so,” she replied, buttoning the big gold buttons of her coat; her spirits had risen; she was not afraid of her brother any longer; he had said his worst and she had made him feel his impotence. After all it did not really matter what he knew or guessed, he would not talk.
“My poor darling, has he worried you?” said Lady Bassenthwaite, full of sympathy, when she returned.
“Worried me? I should think so!” she answered. “He insists on my shutting myself up at Whiteleaf, and says Boo is to have no more Paris frocks. Pray give me some tea, I am worn out with being lectured!”
Lady Bassenthwaite’s sympathy did not include credulity.
“He can’t have come out all the way from Cowes to Bergen only to talk about Boo’s frocks,” she said later in the evening to her husband.