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A very tall overgrown schoolboy did Norman feel himself for one bashful moment, when he found himself alone with the two ladies; but he was ready to be set at ease by Mrs. Larpent's good-natured manner, when she said something of Rollo's discourtesy.
"That isn't the point, is it?" said Larpent. "No? What is the point?" Saltash turned again to the whisky decanter. "Well, you've got me into a damn' hole, and I want to know how you're going to get me out again." Larpent's voice was gruff and surly; he stared into his tumbler without drinking. Saltash chuckled to himself with mischievous amusement. "My dear chap, I can't get you out.
She came up to meet him, her question expressed in her looks. "Asleep," he said; "I hope the pulses are quieter. All depends on her wakening." "Poor, poor Flora!" said Meta, wiping away her tears. "What have you done with the woman?" "I sent her to Mrs. Larpent's. I knew she would receive her and keep her till she could write to her friends. Bellairs took her, but I could hardly speak to her "
MY DEAR FRIEND: Your last letter, of the 5th, gave me as much pleasure as your former had given me uneasiness; and Larpent's acknowledgment of his negligence frees you from those suspicions, which I own I did entertain, and which I believe every one would, in the same concurrence of circumstances, have entertained. So much for that.
Are you going to congratulate me? We were married four days ago." Larpent's hand came out to him abruptly. "It's the best thing you've ever done, my lord," he said. "And you will never regret it." "What makes you say that?" said Saltash curiously. Their hands gripped and fell apart. Larpent answered him in the brief fashion of the man whose words are few.
Larpent, returning, wondered what his patron had been saying to make the boy's eyes wet with tears, but betrayed no curiosity on the subject. "Are you going to let him stay in here?" he asked, as he bound a lotion-soaked pad over the damaged eye. "For the present," said Saltash. "Any objection?" "Not the smallest." Larpent's tone was absolutely noncommittal. "Make him lie quiet, that's all!"
Saltash flung himself forward again, his free hand outstretched, slipped and nearly fell on his face, then was caught by a vice-like grip that drew him upward with grim strength. In a moment he was braced against the frame of the door, almost standing on it, the saloon gaping below him a black pit of destruction. Larpent's torch showed the companion stairs practically perpendicular above them.
I went back to the sea and left her to work out her own damnation." "And yet you loved her?" Saltash said, with a queer twist of the features that was not of mirth. "I loved her, yes. If I hadn't loved her I would never have come to her when she called. That is love the thing that doesn't die." A sudden throb sounded in Larpent's voice. He paused for a moment in his walk, then paced on.
Larpent's sympathetic questions, and Meta's softening eyes, gradually drew from him a great deal about Margaret's helpless state, and her patience, and capabilities, and how every one came to her with all their cares; and Norman, as he spoke, mentally contrasted the life, untouched by trouble and care, led by the fair girl before him, with that atmosphere of constant petty anxieties round her namesake's couch, at years so nearly the same.
"Now look here! What I've really come back for is to see you married. All this preliminary messing about is nothing but a weariness to the flesh. Get it over, man! There's nothing on earth to wait for. Larpent's willing enough. In fact, he agrees with me the sooner the better." "He would!" said Bunny with a touch of bitterness. "Well, you can't ask for anything better," maintained Saltash.
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