"It just shows," she said, "that you can't play tricks with life. I thought that for once we'd managed to break the rules without being noticed."
"What does it matter?" I retorted. "I have found you now, and I'm not going to lose you again. Oh, Astarte, if you only knew how I've missed you!"
"Dear Stephen," she said gently. Then she released her hands, and put them behind her back. "I want to make things quite clear," she added. "It's all one can do now."
"Go on," I said encouragingly.
"I suppose Lady Bulstrode has told you who I am?"
I nodded.
"Well, in a way that explains everything. You see, I spent three years with father before he was killed, and the whole of that time we were either sailing about in the Hyacinth, or else making little expeditions into places like Patagonia or New Guinea. You can imagine what effect a life like that would have on a girl of seventeen. By the time I was twenty I'd almost forgotten that there was any other way of living except in a ship or in a tent. As for wanting anything else," she shrugged her shoulders, "I don't suppose two people have ever been happier together than father and I were."
For a moment she paused.
"Then," she went on, a little wearily, "he was killed. I can't tell you what that time meant to me. You see, somehow or other I had never thought of life without him. He was so strong and brave and splendid, it seemed impossible that he could die like other people. I was trying to think things out, trying to make up my mind what to do, when Lady Bulstrode wrote to me and asked me to come here. So I came, and here I've been ever since."
"And you've been—been happy?" I asked, for want of a better word.