Mrs. Ingham-Baker reflected for a moment.
"We might go in the Croonah with Luke," she then observed timidly.
"Ye-es."
And after a little while Mrs. Ingham-Baker rose and bade her daughter good-night.
Agatha remained before the fire in the low chair with her face resting on her two hands, and who can tell all that she was thinking? For the thoughts of youth are very quick. They are different from the thoughts of maturity, inasmuch as they rise higher into happiness and descend deeper into misery. Agatha Ingham-Baker knew that she had her own life to shape, with only such blundering, well-meant a.s.sistance as her mother could give her. She had found out that the world cannot pause to help the stricken, or to give a hand to the fallen, but that it always has leisure to cringe and make way for the successful.
Other girls had been successful. Why should not she? And if--and if -
The next morning at breakfast Mrs. Ingham-Baker took an opportunity of asking Mrs. Harrington if she knew Malta.
"Malta," answered the grey lady, "is a sort of Nursery India. I have known girls marry at Malta, but I have known more who were obliged to go to India."
"That," answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker, "is exactly what I am afraid of."
"Having to go on to India?" inquired Mrs. Harrington, looking over her letters.
"No. I am afraid that Malta is not quite the place one would like to take one"s daughter to."
"That depends, I should imagine, upon the views one may have respecting one"s daughter," answered the lady of the house carelessly.
At this moment Agatha came in looking fresh and smart in a tweed dress. There was something about her that made people turn in the streets to look at her again. For years she had noted this with much satisfaction. But she was beginning to get a little tired of the homage of the pavement. Those who turned to glance a second time never came back to offer her a heart and a fortune. She was perhaps beginning faintly to suspect that which many of us know-- namely, that she who has the admiration of many rarely has the love of one; and if by chance she gets this, she never knows its value and rarely keeps it.
"I was just asking Mrs. Harrington about Malta, dear," exclaimed Mrs. Ingham-Baker. "It is a nice place, is it not, Marian?"
"I believe it is."
"And somehow I quite want to go there. I can"t think why," said Mrs. Ingham-Baker volubly. "It would be so nice to get a little sunshine after these grey skies, would it not, dear?"
Agatha gave a little shiver as she sat down.
"It would be very nice to feel really warm," she said. "But there is the horrid sea voyage."
"I dare say you would enjoy that very much after the first two days," put in Mrs. Harrington.
"Especially if we select a nice large boat--one of those with two funnels?" put in Mrs. Ingham-Baker. "Now I wonder what boat we could go by?"
"Luke"s," suggested Mrs. Harrington, with cynical curtness. There was a subtle suggestion of finality in her tone, a tiniest note of weariness which almost said -
"Now we have reached our goal."
"I suppose," said Mrs. Ingham-Baker doubtfully, "that it is really a fine vessel?"
"So I am told."
"I really expect," put in Agatha carelessly, "that one steamer is as good as another."
Mrs. Harrington turned on her like suave lightning.
"But one boat is not so well officered as another, my dear!" she said.
Agatha--not to be brow-beaten, keen as the older fencer--looked Mrs.
Harrington straight in the face.
"You mean Luke," she said. "Of course I dare say he is a good officer. But one always feels doubtful about trusting one"s friends--does one not?"
"One does," answered Mrs. Harrington, turning to her letters.
CHAPTER XI. SHIPS UPON THE SEA.
All such things touch secret strings For heavy hearts to bear.
"And you don"t seem to care."
Agatha smiled a little inward smile of triumph.
"Don"t I?" she answered, with a sidelong glance beneath her lashes.
Luke stared straight in front of him with set lips. He looked a dangerous man to trifle with, and what woman can keep her hands out of such danger as this?
They were walking backwards and forwards on the broad promenade deck of the Croonah, and the Croonah was gliding through the grey waters of the Atlantic. To their left lay the coast of Portugal smiling in the sunshine. To their right the orb of day himself, lowering cloudless to the horizon. Ahead, bleak and lonely, lay the dread Burlings. The maligned Bay of Biscay lay behind, and already a large number of the pa.s.sengers had plucked up spirit to leave the cabin stairs, crawling on deck to lie supine in long chairs and talk hopefully of calmer days to come.
Agatha had proved herself to be a good sailor. She walked beside Luke FitzHenry with her usual dainty firmness of step and confidence of carriage. Luke himself--in uniform--looked sternly in earnest.
They had been talking of Gibraltar, where the Croonah was to touch the next morning, and Luke had just told Agatha that he could not go ash.o.r.e with her and Mrs. Ingham-Baker.
"Don"t I?" the girl reiterated with a little sigh.
"Well, it does not sound like it."
"The truth is," said Agatha, "that I have an inward conviction that it would only be more trouble than it is worth."
"What would be more trouble than it is worth?"
"Going ash.o.r.e."
"Then you will not go?" he asked eagerly.
"I think not," she answered, with demure downcast eyes.
And Luke FitzHenry was the happiest man on board the Croonah. There was no mistaking her meaning. Luke, who knew himself to be a pessimist--a man who persistently looked for ill-fortune--felt that her meaning could not well be other than that she preferred remaining on board because he could not go ash.o.r.e.
The dinner bell rang out over the quiet decks, and, with a familiar little nod, Agatha turned away from her companion.