“Ah, perhaps it is just as well,” Livingstone replied, gravely. “But how lucky!” he added; “there she is now. Everybody is at the Casino about this time of day, I fancy. May I bring her over and present her to you, Miss Lee?”
“Of course you may, Mr. Livingstone. I shall be delighted to meet her. And if she is to matronize me, the sooner that I begin to get accustomed to her severities the better.”
And then Mr. Hutchinson Port suffered a fresh pang of misery when the presentation was accomplished and he was forced to say approximately pleasant things to a lady whose decidedly ballet-like attire in the surf—or, to be precise, on the beach above high-water-mark, where, for some occult reason, she usually saw fit to do the most of her bathing—joined to the exceeding celerity of her conduct generally, had marked her during the preceding season as the conspicuous centre of one phase of life at the Pier. Nor was Mr. Port’s lot made happier as he listened to the brisk discussion that ensued in regard to the organization of the yachting party, and found that its two remaining members were to be drawn, as was only natural, from the eminently meteoric set to which Mrs. Rattleton belonged.
Had time been given Mr. Port for consideration it is probable that he would have collected his mental forces sufficiently to have enabled him to lodge a remonstrance; he might even—though this is doubtful, for Dorothy’s voting power was vigorous—have accomplished a veto. But projects in which Mrs. Rattleton was concerned never went slowly; and in the present case the necessity for getting back in time for the races really compelled haste. And so it came to pass that not until the Fleetwings was off the Brenton’s Reef light-ship, with her nose pointed well up into the north-east, was there framed in Mr. Port’s slow-moving mind a suitable line of argument upon which to base a peremptory refusal to go upon the expedition—and by that time he was so excruciatingly ill in his own cabin that coherent utterance and converse with his kind were alike impossible.
So far as Mr. Port was concerned the ensuing six days made up an epoch in his life that can only be described as an agonized blank. And when—as it seemed to him many ages later—the Fleetwings once more cast anchor off Narragansett Pier, and he stepped shakily from the schooner’s gig to the Casino dock, the usual plumpness and ruddiness of his face had given place to a yellow leanness, and his weight had been reduced by very nearly twenty pounds. The cruise had been a flying one, or he never would have finished it. After the first six hours he would have landed on a desert island cheerfully—and it is not impossible that a hint from Dorothy as to her uncle’s probable movements should a harbor be made had induced Livingstone to give the land a wide berth.
Dorothy came ashore blooming. “You don’t know, Uncle Hutchinson,” she said, “what a perfectly lovely time I’ve had”—and this cheerful assertion was the literal truth, for Mr. Port had entered his cabin before the yacht had crossed the line between Beaver Tail and Point Judith, and had not emerged from it until the anchor went overboard. “And you don’t know,” Miss Lee went on with effusion, “how grateful your angel is to you for helping her to have such a delightful cruise. I’m sorry that you haven’t been very well, Uncle Hutchinson; but I know that you will be all the better for it. Poor dear mamma, you know, was bilious too, and going to sea always made her wretched; but she used to be wonderfully well always when she got on shore again. And you’ll be wonderfully well too, you dear; and that will be your reward for helping your angel to have such a perfectly delightful time.”
Mr. Port made no reply to this address, for his condition of collapse was too complete to permit him to give form in words to the thoughts of rage and resentment which were burning in the depths of his injured soul. Without a word to one single member of the party, he climbed heavily into a carriage and was driven directly to his hotel—while Dorothy, still under the chaperonage of Mrs. Rattleton, gayly joined the pleasant little lunch-party at the Casino with which the yacht voyage came to an end.
IX.
During the ensuing week, a considerable portion of which Mr. Port passed in the privacy of his own room, the relations between Miss Lee and her guardian were characterized by a chill formality that was ominous of a coming storm. In point of fact, Mr. Port was waiting only until he should fully regain his strength in order to try conclusions with Dorothy once and for all—and he was most highly resolved that in the impending battle royal he should not suffer defeat. So far, he had gone down in each encounter with his spirited antagonist because the tactics employed against him were of an unfamiliar sort. But he was beginning to get the hang of these tactics now; and he also had got what in fighting parlance would have been styled his second wind. As he thought of the wrongs which had been heaped upon him, rage filled his breast; and the strong determination slowly shaped itself within him that to the finesse of the enemy he would oppose a solid front of brute force.