"He is very proud," she said, a little proudly herself.
"I know, I know; but he must let me help him in his career. I can do
something in that direction, and I will. But for him! Ah, Nell, I don't
like to think of it; I don't like to contemplate what might have
happened if I had lost you altogether. Yes; I owe him a debt no man
could hope to repay. I wish it had been I who had lived at Beaumont
Buildings and played the violin to you, instead of him. All that time I
was sailing in the _Seagull_, or wandering about Asia, wondering whether
there was anything on earth, or in the waters under the earth, that
could bring me a moment's pleasure, a moment of forgetfulness."
"And--and--you thought of me all that time? There was no one else?"
"There was no one else," he said, as simply as she had answered his
question. "Though sometimes----Do you want me to tell you the whole
truth, dearest?"
"The whole truth," she responded, looking down at him with trustful
eyes, and yet with a little anxious line on her brow. For what woman
would not have been apprehensive? She had cast him off, and he had been
wandering about the world, free to love again, to choose a wife.
"Well, sometimes I tried to efface your image from my mind, to forget
Nell of Shorne Mills, in the surest and quickest way. I went to some
dinners and receptions; I joined in a picnic or two, and an occasional
riding party. Once I sailed in a man's yacht which had three of the
local belles on board, and I tried to fall in love with one of them--any
of them--but it was of no use. Now and again I endeavored to persuade
myself that I was falling in love. There was one, a girl who was
something like you; she had dark hair, and eyes that had a look of yours
in them; and when she was silent I used to look at her and try----But
when she spoke, her voice was unlike yours, and her very unlikeness
recalled yours; and I saw you, even as I looked at her, as you stood on
the steps at the quay, or sat in the stern of the _Annie Laurie_, and my
heart grew sick with longing for you, and I'd get up and leave the girl
so suddenly that she used to stare after me with mingled surprise and
indignation. What charm do you exert, what black magic, Nell, that a
big, strong, hulking fellow like me cannot get free from the spell you
throw over him? Tell me, dearest."