“Oh!” he exclaimed softly, and his voice had a certain note of puzzlement and anxiety in it. “Oh!” he repeated, and again he said “Oh!”
The baronet smiled a little grimly in his red beard, but his duck's-egg green eyes were as serene and as cold as ever.
The three gently ejaculated “Ohs” of the captain had told him much. His quick brain realised that he had dealt the captain an exceedingly well-landed blow. Then the baronet's smile died, for, following the train of his suspicious thoughts, he instinctively grasped and held on to the idea that just as Melun had been searching his kit-bag for the purpose of blackmail, so that individual purposed marriage with the Prime Minister's daughter to the same end.
This notion disquieted him greatly.
It disturbed him so much that the hard eyes hardened. Only the baronet's friends knew that they sometimes hardened because of the softness behind their gaze.
Westerham's heart, indeed, rose in revolt against the suggestion that this man, spurned of the Army, suspected of the clubs, distrusted by every honourable man, should for a moment presume to reach out and touch the hand of Kathleen Carfax. Not for such a man as Melun was the girl with the calm yet, at the same time, troubled face, that had looked out from the tattered picture and drawn him back to England.
Westerham's brain worked as swiftly as the brain of a woman, as do the brains of men who, cut off from the electric-lift side of civilisation, day by day face Nature in its true, maternal, and therefore its feminine aspect. It was a long guess, but a shrewd guess, and a true guess, that if Melun had his hopes set on Lady Kathleen, the girl with the dark hair and steadfast eyes stood in some peril.
The mere thought of it quickened Westerham's blood, and the quickening of his blood livened his brain still more, so that he watched, almost cat-like, the glance of Melun's eyes as they followed the placing of the Lady Kathleen's picture in his pocket.
For a couple of minutes nothing was said. Each man knew instinctively that he must move to the attack, but realised that a mistake at the opening of the game might possibly spell disaster.