He heard her draw the bedclothes about her. When he awoke in the morning, she slept, but he would not breakfast until she was ready to breakfast with him, and so he sat, hungry, and waited for the hour that she devoted to her toilette. Then they went to the saloon, and afterwards to the deck, together.
Neither on that day nor on the day following was Muriel alone with von Klausen. Indeed, she was not alone with him again until they touched, at ten o'clock of a bright morning, at Plymouth, where the grateful green and yellow hills rose from the blue water, and the town nestled in a long white belt behind a chain of grim, grey men-of-war. The tender had stood by, and, now that some of the high stacks of mail-bags, which had been filling the stern decks since dawn, were transferred, an endless procession of slouching porters out of uniform carried, one brick to each man for each trip, large bricks of silver down the gangways and deposited them in piles of five, well forward on the tender. Jim had gone to the writing-room to scribble a note that might catch a fast boat from England to his agent at the mine, and Muriel was left beside the rail to talk with the Austrian.
"It has been a delightful voyage, has it not?" he asked, in that precise English to which she had now grown accustomed.
"I dare say," answered Muriel. "I don't know. You forget that I have had no others with which to compare it."
"But you have not been bored?"
"No."
"It has surely been pleasant, for I have by it had the opportunity to meet you and your brave husband."
"My husband, I know, would say as much of it because he has met you."
The Austrian bowed.
"Nor have I failed," he said, "to tell him how much the entire company aboard seem to admire his charming wife."