And once more she is gone.
He does not see her again that day. Of the three places laid for dinner at the round table in the salle à manger, only two are occupied; hers is, and remains, empty. She is not with her parents, and, what is more, she does not appear to be missed by them. It fills Jim with something of the same shocked surprise as he had felt on hearing the cold and surly tone in which she had been addressed by her father, to see how much more, and more genially, that father talks; how much less morose his back looks than had been the case on the previous evening.
The next morning rises superb in steady splendour, and Jim, on issuing out on the little red-tiled terrace, finds the whole strength of the hotel gathered upon it. Even the worst invalids, who have not shown their noses outside their rooms for a fortnight, are sunning themselves, wrapped in apparently unnecessary furs. The Arabs and Turks have spread their gay rugs and carpets, and displayed their bits of stuff, their brasswork, and their embroidery. They make a charming garden of colour under the blue. One is lying beside his wares, in an azure jacket and a rose-red sash, twanging a "gunébri," or little Arab mandolin. Apart from the rest of the company, at the extreme end of the terrace, in a place which is evidently hers by prescriptive right, close to the balustrade, upon whose blue and white tiled top her books are lying, Elizabeth is sitting—and sitting alone, neither truculent father not frightened mother barring approach to her. He makes his way at once to her.
"You were not at dinner last night?"
"No."
"I hope that did not mean that you were ill?"
Her eyes are not lifted to his—resting rather on the balustrade, through whose pierced brickwork little boughs of Bougainvillia are pushing.
"No, I was not ill," she replies slowly; "but I had made such a figure of myself by crying that mammy thought I had better stay away. When I looked in the glass," she adds humorously, "I thought so myself."
"There was not much sign of tears about you when we parted at Notre Dame d'Afrique," he says brusquely.
"No, but"—with a sudden lifting of her pretty lashes—"you know there is never any medium in me; I am always either laughing or crying; and, of course, seeing you again brought—brought things back to me."