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"We were all down below. I had to rest a little. When I came up the watchman was asleep. He swears he wasn't, but I know better. Nobody heard any noise, unless you did. But perhaps you were asleep?" he asked, deferentially. "Yes no I must have been," she said, faintly. Lingard's soul was exalted by his talk with Mrs. Travers, by the strain of incertitude and by extreme fatigue.
With cheeks as white as her sister's, with eyes full of trouble and perplexity, but tearless, Nellie Travers stepped quickly into the room and put a trembling white hand upon the other's shoulder: "Kate, it is no time for so bitter an estrangement as this. I have done simply what our soldier father would have done had he been here. I am fully aware of what it must cost me.
But as he could not run away openly from Mrs. Travers he advanced to meet her. "I do hope you have nothing to tell me," he said with whimsical earnestness. "I? No! Have you?" He assured her he had not, and proffered a request. "Don't let us tell each other anything, Mrs. Travers. Don't let us think of anything. I believe it will be the best way to get over the evening."
Jorgenson, however, had a distinct impression in which his morning talk with Mrs. Travers had only confirmed him, that those two had quarrelled for good. As, indeed, was unavoidable. What did Tom Lingard want with any woman? The only woman in Jorgenson's life had come in by way of exchange for a lot of cotton stuffs and several brass guns.
"Dii meliora!" said Kenelm, gravely. "Some ills are too serious to be approached even in joke. As for Miss Travers, the moment you call her benevolent you inspire me with horror. I know too well what a benevolent girl is, officious, restless, fidgety, with a snub nose, and her pocket full of tracts. I will not go to the harvest-supper." "Hist!" said the Parson, softly.
How many women sometimes happy, sometimes unhappy, according to the rulings of an inscrutable Fate have married, partly out of flattered vanity, but chiefly because they are good-hearted, and labor under the mistaken conviction that a man's happiness rests on their decision? And in this particular instance Lois was honestly attached to Travers.
Carried out of himself, entering now wholly into the adventure, Travers caught up a violin near him and sent the bow over the strings with a master touch. He hardly knew what he played; he was himself, carried away on a wave of enchantment. "Ah!" The word escaped Priscilla like a cry of glad response. "Now!" They two, the musician and the dancer, seemed alone in the open space.
"I thank you much for your thought of me," said Travers, "and the affair shall be seen to at once, though the purchase is no longer important to me.
Poor Travers! I was sorry for him, although I was not fond of him.
The only way of bringing the matter to a test would be to persuade Belarab to let his men march out and make an attack on Tengga's stronghold this moment. Then we would learn something. But I couldn't persuade Belarab to march out into this fog. Indeed, an expedition like this might end badly. I myself don't believe that all Tengga's people are on the lagoon. . . . Where is Mrs. Travers?"
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