‘No; she cannot bear my presence. My maid will prepare for me the berth adjoining my old one. She must be humoured. Who can express the agonies her pride is costing her?’
‘I fear Wilfrid sleeps rather too close to her ladyship,’ said I. ‘There’s a cabin next mine. I should like to see him in it. Figure his taking it into his head in an ungovernable fit of temper to walk in upon his wife——’
‘If such an impulse as that visited him,’ she answered, ‘it would be all the same even if he should sleep amongst the crew forward. Do not anticipate trouble, Mr. Monson. The realities are fearful enough.’
I smiled at her beseeching look. ‘Lucky for your sister,’ said I, ‘that you are on board. She arrives without a stitch saving what she stands up in, and here she finds your wardrobe, the two-score conveniences of the lady’s toilet table, and a maid on top of it all, with pins and needles and scissors, bodkins and tape—bless me! what a paradise after the “’Liza Robbins.”’ And then I told her how the ‘Shark’ was lost, giving her the yarn as I had it from Finn. ‘Anyway,’ said I, ‘Lady Monson is rescued. Your desire is fulfilled.’
‘But I did not wish her—I did not want Colonel Hope-Kennedy killed,’ she exclaimed with a shudder.
‘Yet you could have shot him,’ said I; ‘do you remember our chat that night off the Isle of Wight?’
‘Yes, perfectly well,’ she answered. ‘But now that he is dead—oh, it is too terrible to think of,’ she added with a sob in her voice.
‘It must always be so with generous natures,’ I exclaimed. ‘What is abhorrent to them in life, death converts into a pathetic appeal. Best perhaps to leave old Time to revenge one’s wrongs. And now that her ladyship is on board, what is Wilfrid going to do with her?’
‘She is never likely to leave her cabin,’ she replied.
‘When the “Bride” arrives home, then?’