So, then, this fair, slim creature, whose unheeding eyes had dwelt on him for a fleeting second ere they sought the horizon, was his wife! It was an extraordinary notion; fantastic, yet not wholly unpleasing. It would be rather a joke, if opportunity offered, to flirt with her. He had never flirted with any girl, and hardly knew how to begin; but much reading had taught him that the lady herself might prove an admirable coach if so minded.
Of course, there was room for error in one respect. He might have married the sister, who, thus far, nearly midday, had not been visible during daylight. He calculated the pros and cons of the situation. If his "wife" was feeling the strain of that unnerving experience in the great hall of the Castle of San Juan, she might now be resting in her stateroom. But why should the sister, on whose shoulders, one would suppose, sat no such heavy load of care, come on deck alone and scan the blue Pacific with that dreamy air?
Yes, by Jove, this really must be his wife! Somehow, poetic justice demanded that she, and not her sister, should meet him thus unconsciously.
In covert fashion he began to study her. The deck on which she stood was fully twenty feet above him, and she was still further separated from him by some thirty feet of the fore hatch, but he noted that her eyes were of the Parma violet tint so frequently met with in the heroines of fiction, yet all too seldom seen in real life. Being a mere man, he was not aware that blue eyes in shadow assume that exact tint. At any rate, as eyes, they were more than satisfactory.
Her nose was well modeled, with broad, flexible nostrils, unfailing sign of good health and an equable disposition. Her lips were prettily curved, and the oval face, framed in a cluster of brown hair, was poised on a perfectly molded neck. She owned shapely arms; he had already had occasion to admire her hands; a small, neatly-shod foot was visible under the lowest rail as the girl leaned on her elbows in an attitude of unstudied grace.
Altogether, Mr. Maseden liked the looks of Mrs. Maseden!
He was beginning to revel in sentiment when the edifice of seemingly substantial fact so swiftly constructed by a fertile imagination was dissipated into space by hearing a voice--_the_ voice, he was sure--coming from some unseen part of the upper deck.