CHAPTER XI.
AN UNSPOKEN APPEAL.
"What have I done? Is she vexed? Have I offended her?" he asked the next morning, in a rapid manner, when his hostess came on deck. The gale had abated somewhat, but gloom overspread earth and sky. It was nothing to the gloom that overspread his usually frank and cheerful face.
"You mean Mary?" she says, though she knows well enough.
"Yes; haven't you seen? She seems to treat me as though we had never met before—as though we were perfect strangers—and I know she is too kind-hearted to cause any one pain——"
Here he looks somewhat embarrassed for a moment; but his customary straightforwardness comes to his rescue.
"Yes; I will confess I am very much hurt by it. And—and I should like to know if there is any cause. Surely you must have noticed it?"
She had noticed it, sure enough; and, in contrast with that studied coldness which Mary Avon had shown to her friend of former days, she had remarked the exceeding friendliness the young lady was extending to the Laird's nephew. But would she draw the obvious conclusion? Not likely; she was too staunch a friend to believe any such thing. All the same there remained in her mind a vague feeling of surprise, with perhaps a touch of personal injury.
"Well, Angus, you know," she said, evasively; "Mary is very much preoccupied just at present. Her whole condition of life is changed, and she has many things to think of——"
"Yes; but she is frank enough with her other friends. What have I done, that I should be made a stranger of?"