As her tone had become interrogatory I assented. "To be sure. There's
no reason whatever--" thinking to myself that they would be more likely
indeed to keep quiet about it. They had other things to talk of. And
then remembering little Fyne stuck upstairs for an unconscionable time,
enough to blurt out everything he ever knew in his life, I reflected that
he would assume naturally that Captain Anthony had nothing to learn from
him about Flora de Barral. It had been up to now my assumption too. I
saw my mistake. The sincerest of women will make no unnecessary
confidences to a man. And this is as it should be.
"No--no!" I said reassuringly. "It's most unlikely. Are you much
concerned?"
"Well, you see, when I came down," she said again in that precise demure
tone, "when I came down--into the garden Captain Anthony misunderstood--"
"Of course he would. Men are so conceited," I said.
I saw it well enough that he must have thought she had come down to him.
What else could he have thought? And then he had been "gentleness
itself." A new experience for that poor, delicate, and yet so resisting
creature. Gentleness in passion! What could have been more seductive to
the scared, starved heart of that girl? Perhaps had he been violent, she
might have told him that what she came down to keep was the tryst of
death--not of love. It occurred to me as I looked at her, young, fragile
in aspect, and intensely alive in her quietness, that perhaps she did not
know herself then what sort of tryst she was coming down to keep.
She smiled faintly, almost awkwardly as if she were totally unused to
smiling, at my cheap jocularity. Then she said with that forced
precision, a sort of conscious primness: "I didn't want him to know."
I approved heartily. Quite right. Much better. Let him ever remain
under his misapprehension which was so much more flattering for him.
I tried to keep it in the tone of comedy; but she was, I believe, too
simple to understand my intention. She went on, looking down.
"Oh! You think so? When I saw you I didn't know why you were here. I
was glad when you spoke to me because this is exactly what I wanted to
ask you for. I wanted to ask you if you ever meet Captain Anthony--by
any chance--anywhere--you are a sailor too, are you not?--that you would
never mention--never--that--that you had seen me over there."