"I cannot believe it! I cannot!" insisted Genevieve. "With his strength, his courage! It's only been the circumstances; that he has had nobody to—I—I beg your pardon! Of course you—What I mean is somebody who—" She buried her face in her hands, blushing more vividly than before.
The Englishman's face lightened. "Then you've not let my deplorable blunder alter your attitude towards him?"
"Not in the slightest."
He leaned forward. "Then—I can wait no longer! You must know how greatly I—All those days coming up to Aden I could say nothing. Before coming aboard, he had told me why he could not permit you to—to commit yourself irrevocably."
He paused. Genevieve bent over lower. She did not speak.
He went on steadily: "It was then I realized fully his innate fineness. I own it astonished me, well as I thought I knew him. With his brains, his 'grit,' and that, I'd say he could become anything he wished—were it not for his—for the one weakness."
Genevieve flung up her head, to gaze at him in indignant protest.
"Weakness! How can you say that? He is so strong—so strong!"
"In all else than that," insisted Lord James. "You must face the hard fact. Gad! this is far worse than I thought it would be. But I knew you before he did, and I've played fair with him. It was not easy to say nothing those days before we reached Aden, or to stay away from you after I reached home. Even he could not have found it so hard. He has all that stubborn power of endurance; while I—"
"You have no cause to reproach yourself. I cannot say how greatly it pleased me that you took him to Ruthby Castle."
"Could you but have been there, too! He and the pater hit it off out of hand. Jolly sensible chap, the pater—quiet, bookish—long head."