To Mariol he gave, before bed-time, an account of the outrage to which Miss Winstanley had been subjected, begging him to try to trace out the offender, and silence her at any cost.
The Frenchman, promising to do this, and relieved at the collapse of his friend’s nascent affair with Miss Winstanley, was hardly surprised, on awaking next day, and finding their ship safely alongside her dock in Liverpool, to be told that his lordship, impatient of delay, had gone ashore during the night in the tender that had nosed its way to the fog-bound liner to carry off the mails, leaving his servant to follow with his luggage.
Mariol, after attending unsuccessfully to the business entrusted to him by Clandonald, encountered Miss Carstairs, her chaperon and maid, on deck awaiting the summons to go ashore. He stood by them, commenting with amusement upon the sudden disintegration of the ardent intimacies of the voyage. To judge from appearances, the chief aim of the passengers was now to rid themselves of one another as promptly as possible. People who had sworn fidelity over night were offish, mysterious, absorbed in petty anxieties about customs, telegrams, trains and tips. As usual to inexperienced tourists, the latter question arose to be a cloud that was ultimately to overshadow the glories of European travel. What attendants had been remunerated according to service done, what countenances had darkened, who had seemed satisfied, was discussed in whispers between anxious family groups. Farewell sentiments bestowed upon friends one thought one had seen the last of were found to be superfluous, since the recipients were sure to be found again provokingly popping up everywhere; on the gangway, on the docks, and facing the customs officers. Lucky if one were not to be thrust together with them into the same railway carriage, all to arrive in London hating each other heartily!
M. de Mariol, without appearing to do so, had scanned narrowly the outgoing crowd from the steamer. No trace had appeared, here or elsewhere, of the familiar figure of Clandonald’s former wife. A suggestion occurring to him that the excursive Ruby had been last heard of in America, and was probably returning under an alias, made the search in the passenger lists a futile one. Whatever were the facts in the history of this obnoxious and insufferable woman, he must give her up for the present as a bad job. He felt almost inclined to believe that some one else had thrown suspicion upon her, in order to cover a low attack upon Miss Winstanley and Clandonald.