“Thank you very much,--the idea occurred to me when I saw you this afternoon that I had here an opportunity which I have long sought.”
She glanced about among the shadows, bulkier, blacker, because of the keenness of the electric glare, as if she feared observation or interruption. The piano in the saloon was beginning to strum “Oh, rosy dreams!” with a disregard of accidentals calculated to give the nightmare to the fellow-passengers of the performer. The perfume of cigars floated down from the hurricane deck--Ducie’s was dead in his hand. A dreary cow on the lower deck seemed to have just discovered that she was in process of shipment and was mournfully lowing for her calf a hundred miles or more up-stream. Deep guttural voices of roustabouts rose in jocose altercation for a moment from the depths of the boiler deck, and then all was silent again.
“I have long sought an opportunity to restore to Randal one of his gifts, overlooked at the time that I returned the others. I found it afterward, and was embarrassed,--shocked, in fact----” she paused abruptly.
“There was the registered mail, or the express, I suppose,” he suggested coolly.
“I wanted to explain.” She felt her face flame. “It was of intrinsic value other than sentimental.”
“And,” she sturdily held to her purpose, “I did not wish him to misinterpret my motive in keeping it.”
“I can easily understand that,” he fleered, full of vicarious rancor.
“It is a bauble in the shape of a key--it is set with a large diamond and a circle of rubies. It was understood between us as the key of his heart,” she could but falter at the revelation of the forlorn little sentimentalities, shallow of root and wilted in the sun of a sudden blaze of prosperity. “And I kept it,” she quavered.
“Randal would never think of the diamond and rubies,” he said, reaching, indeed, the limit. “You have too many jewels, doubtless, for your motive to be misconstrued.”
There was a moment of dead silence. “He could never have said that,” she replied, in a voice that trembled with anger. “He is not in the least like you. I hate you for looking like him.”
“Thank you for dispensing with ceremony and telling me this on so short an acquaintance. It is more than evident that you like neither of us over-much. May I ask what are the commands you design to lay upon me, for if you have no more to say I should be glad to withdraw, with your kind permission.”