‘And now, Mr. Ernest Neuchamp, what have you to say for yourself?’ said Antonia, in a tone between jest and earnest, ‘in that you have been in my presence for half an hour and have only smiled twice, have called me Miss Frankston, and have looked at that delightful creature, the Count, with an air of stern disapproval? Where do you expect to go to?’
‘Really,’ said Ernest, ‘I am unconscious of having done or looked anything peculiarly unsatisfactory. But I thought you were so exceedingly well contented with the Count’s society that I doubted whether I was not making an undesirable third. And who is this Count?’
‘Well, he had letters to papa and old Captain Blockstrop; and all Sydney is wild about him. No party is worth going to where he does not come. He is the most accomplished and charming person—plays, sings, paints, has been a soldier and desperately wounded. All the young ladies of Sydney are wild about him. He is enormously rich, and gives such parties on board his yacht!’
‘And is Miss Frankston one of the young ladies whom this broken-Englished invincible has conquered?’ asked Ernest. ‘May I be permitted to congratulate her?’
‘You must judge for yourself,’ said the girl, with so merry a look and such a genuinely amused expression that Mr. Neuchamp’s slight experience of the ways of womankind assured him that no great damage to his pupil’s heart had as yet taken place. ‘But there is just time for a stroll on the beach before dinner, and a slight sketch of your adventures since you left us. You look quite a bushman now. How sunburned you have managed to get!’
Mr. Neuchamp was but mortal. The best of us, under certain conditions, are weak. As Antonia shut down the piano and ran to get her straw hat with girlish freedom of manner, he felt his justifiable wrath evaporating. Long before they had finished that pleasant ramble in the cool twilight, with the stars one by one appearing, the surge voices whispering low and solemnly kind, the cool briny savour of the ocean—a sea of enchantment to Ernest, but of yesterday from the inner deserts—long before the somewhat emphasised dinner-bell rang, Ernest repented of his pettishness. He knew that his friendship had suffered neither wrong nor change. He felt that there were still feelings and aspirations in that fresh, unspoiled, girlish heart to which he alone had the password. He answered Mr. Frankston’s boisterous hail from the verandah in a surprisingly nautical and cheery manner, and passed into the enjoyment of dinner, and dinner talk, much relieved in mind.
‘What’s become of the Count, Antonia?’ said the old gentleman. ‘Try that Chablis, Ernest, my boy; imported it since you were down. Old Jedwood didn’t give you anything like that; thundering old screw, isn’t he? good man for all that; trust him with your life. I thought you were going to make the Count stay to dinner, Antonia.’
‘Well, it would have been pleasanter for Mr. Neuchamp, perhaps,’ said the young lady demurely. ‘But he said he had to go to Mrs. Folleton’s.’
‘Oh! that was the attraction then,’ said Mr. Frankston. ‘They say he admires Harriet Folleton tremendously. She will have twenty thousand down; but as he is so wealthy himself, of course the cash can’t matter.’
‘You all seem to take it for granted that he is so very rich, and a wonderful fellow in all respects,’ said Ernest. ‘He’s good-looking enough, I admit; but who is to know whether he is really the man he represents himself to be?’