than is generally adopted by the Briton, who looks very respectable at home, but manifests extremely wild notions of the picturesque when he adorns himself for foreign conquest.
Ernest Adair had kept himself entirely aloof from Mrs. Lygon, since the vessel had left harbour. After providing her with a seat, and placing a book in her hand, he had gone further forward, and establishing himself in the narrowest part of the boat, with his back to the bowsprit, he had devoted himself to his favourite cigarettes, but always keeping a careful watch upon Laura.
Once she drew out a pencil, and a note, and seemed about to write. At that moment Adair’s watchfulness was redoubled, and, as a passenger, walking the deck, accidentally paused and screened Laura from his view, his lips compressed with sudden anger. But the next moment the passenger passed on, and Laura’s pencil had not touched the paper. Apparently, she abandoned her idea of writing, and returned the pencil to a very small pocket at her waist.
“What an objectionable place to put a pocket,” said Ernest Adair to himself. “I shall have to ask her for that pencil, and to fabricate a false pretence for doing so, an immorality which I hereby transfer to the account of her sinful milliner.”
Half an hour later, he approached her, bringing with him a little black sac-de-nuit, glistening with newness.
“Merely a word or two,” he said, respectfully—almost deferentially.
Mrs. Lygon looked up for a moment, but made no reply.
“I have not intruded conversation upon you.” he said, in the same tone. “I have scarcely spoken twenty words to you since yesterday afternoon, and those only from necessity. But we shall land in a quarter of an hour, and it may be better to speak here than elsewhere.”
Laura listened, but did not answer.
“You have been in Boulogne before,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Nay, I was not asking a question. I know that you have, and that you are well acquainted with the neighbourhood. At this moment you are troubled at the thought of the crowd on the pier, and the eyes of the people who watch the disembarkation. Have no fear on that account. I have arranged for your being spared all annoyance.”
“How?”
“When we approach the harbour, have the kindness to go down into the fore cabin, and do not come up again until I let you know that it is time to do so.”
“When will that be?”
“When all the passengers have landed and passed the douane, and crowd, toutcrs, and everybody are gone.”
“I thought that the police—”
“The police are good enough to waive rules in my case,” said Ernest Adair, with the slightest symptom of return to his old manner. But he at once resumed his respectful tone.
“A carriage shall be ready on the quay, and we shall be out of the town in a few minutes.”
“And where next?”
“That will entirely depend upon yourself at the expiration of a short interview between us at a house well known to yourself—a most respectable house, I should have said, but that Mrs. Lygon could not by possibility know any other.”
“I will go down at once,” she said, rising from her seat.
“If you please. Only one thing more. You left—this agreeable journey was undertaken somewhat hastily, and though delightful as all improvised pleasures are, hurry has its inconveniences—so against one of them, the entire absence of luggage, I have ventured to provide, and this little bag will supply any temporary wants. My own inexperience in such matters has been assisted by more competent judgment.”
He took the book gently from her hand, and placed in it the handle of the small sac.
“By the way,” he said, “I must give my name in writing to the police, that it may not be blundered. I have no pencil; you have one. Favour me with it for a few moments.”
Mrs. Lygon mechanically complied; her mind was, at the instant, in another direction, or she might not have done so.
“I will write it in the chief cabin,” he said. “We are nearing port—perhaps the sooner you go down the better.”
Having the pencil, he did not fear to hasten away.
Her next act was one that might have befitted Laura Vernon better than the matured Laura Lygon, schooled in self-restraint, and habituated to the calm manners of the world.
With a look of anger that could have been seen through the veil she wore, Mrs. Lygon dashed the bag across the vessel’s side into the sea—watched it for an instant as it sank—and hurried down the stairs of the cabin.
Ernest Adair was as good as his word. Mrs. Lygon was left undisturbed in possession of the fore cabin until the last of the wild cries, and shouts, and howls, with which a steam-boat is emptied at a French port, was silenced, and the vessel was finally moored in waiting for her next trip. A few minutes later, and a gendarme descended, and with the utmost politeness apprised Madame that her carriage awaited her. Whatever question of police had required answer had evidently been met satisfactorily by Adair, for the single duty which the officer permitted himsei was the handing Mrs. Lygon to the quay, where Ernest stood holding the door of a close carriage. She entered it without touching the offered hand of Adair, and was somewhat surprised that he immediately closed the door, and mounted beside the driver, who instantly set his horses in motion. Perhaps, also, she remarked that the vigilant Adair made no inquiry after the sac de nuit, which he might have supposed she had forgotten. But Ernest had seen the action which consigned it to the sea, and believed that he appreciated all the impulse which had induced her to send it thither, a belief in which he was mistaken, as a man of evil morals, no matter how subtle may be his mind, very frequently is, when seeking to solve the delicate problem called a woman’s heart.
