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Shafto listened to Cossie's hysterical lamentations and outpourings with what patience he could assume; until by degrees the dreadful truth began to dawn on him, that he was selected to replace the faithless Lothario!
The last signal Shafto received, ere the group of friends had dissolved into a blur, was a frantic waving of Cossie's damp handkerchief, and he turned his face towards the bows of the Blankshire, now heading down the river, with the happy exaltation of freedom and a grateful sense of escape. The Blankshire was a full and well-known ship.
Unchivalrous as was the idea, he had a hateful conviction that it would not be Cossie's fault if they did not arrive at that conclusion. With this sword of Damocles hanging over his head, and the object of his apprehension being daily brought nearer and yet nearer, Shafto was and looked abjectly miserable. FitzGerald rallied him boisterously on his glum appearance, and on being "off his feed."
"No, I daresay it will be disagreeable but Aunt Emma will see me through. In Cossie's case it is not a matter of deep attachment; she only wants to play me off against that fellow Soames. Ah, here is Michael jingling his tray outside; he wants to lay the cloth and we had better clear." In some respects the dreaded farewell at "Monte Carlo" was even more trying than Douglas had anticipated.
Of late Cossie's manner had become jealously possessive, She seemed to hold him by a nipping tenacious clutch, and pattered out to meet him at the gate, sat next to him at table, and was invariably his partner at tennis. Once, arriving unseen, he had overheard her declaiming to another girl: "No, no, no, I won't have it; Douglas is my boy and my joy! Douglas belongs to me!"
She implored him to write to her, and remained "his devoted till death, Cossie." Shafto thrust his devoted-till-death Cossie's letter into the waste-paper basket, with a gesture of excommunication, and barred the doors of his memory upon her round fat face. Preparations for departure proceeded satisfactorily. He received a number of good wishes and not a few gifts.
"Well, my mother did not cry much, and I have no sisters to mourn for me." "No sisters," she echoed, as if the fact struck hot as unusual. "No, nor brothers either only cousins." "Sometimes they do just as well; are they pretty?" "No," he answered rather curtly, as Cossie's round complacent face rose before his mental eye.
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