She was now standing up and advanced toward him with both hands held out, a welcoming smile on her pretty lips, but he swooped down on her, flung his arms round her like a cabman beating warmth into his hands, kissed her on the brow, the two cheeks and the lips, swaying her back and forward as if about to fling her upstairs.
“Stop, stop,” she cried. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Before my father, too! You great Russian bear!” and, breathless, she put her open palm against his face, and shoved his head away from her.
“Don’t bother about me, Kate,” said her father. “That’s nothing to the way we acted when I was young. Come on, boys, to the smoking-room, and I’ll mix you something good: real Kentucky, twenty-seven years in barrel, and I’ve got all the other materials for a Manhattan.”
“Jack, I am glad to see you,” panted Katherine, all in disarray, which she endeavored to set right by an agitated touch here and there. “Now, Jack, I’m going to take you to the smoking-room, but you’ll have to behave yourself as you walk along the deck. I won’t be made a spectacle of before the crew.”
“Come along, Drummond,” said the Captain, “and bring Miss Dorothy with you.”
But Drummond stood in front of Dorothy Amhurst, and held out his hand.
“You haven’t forgotten me, Miss Amhurst, I hope?”
“Oh, no,” she replied, with a very faint smile, taking his hand.
“It seems incredible that you are here,” he began. “What a lucky man I am. Captain Kempt takes his yacht to rescue his son-in-law that is to be, and incidentally rescues me as well, and then to find you here! I suppose you came because your friend Miss Kempt was aboard?”
“I wrote you a letter, Miss Amhurst, the last night I was in St. Petersburg in the summer.”
“No, not this one. It was the night I was captured, and I never got a chance to post it. It was an important letter--for me.”
“I thought it important--for me,” replied Dorothy, now smiling quite openly. “The Nihilists got it, searching your room after you had been arrested. It was sent on to New York, and given to me.”
“Is that possible? How did they know it was for you?”
“I had been making inquiries through the Nihilists.”
“I wrote you a proposal of marriage, Dorothy.”
“It certainly read like it, but you see it wasn’t signed, and you can’t be held to it.”