Majendie sent a telegram to Prior Street and went.

The wind blew away his headache and put its own strong, violent, gusty life into him.  He felt agreeably excited as he paced the slanting deck.  He stayed there in the wind.

Downstairs in the cabin the Ransomes were quarrelling.

“What on earth,” said she, “possessed you to bring him?”

“And why not?”

“Because of Sarah.”

“What’s she got to do with it?”

“Well, you don’t want them to meet again, do you?”

Dick made his face a puffy blank.  “Why the devil shouldn’t they?” said he.

“Well, you know the trouble he’s had with his wife already about Sarah.”

“It wasn’t about Sarah.  It was another woman altogether!”

“I know that.  But she was the beginning of it.”

“Let her be the end of it, then.  If you’re thinking of him.  The sooner that wife of his gets a separation the better it’ll be for him.”

“And you want my sister to be mixed up in that?”

Mrs. Ransome began to cry.

“She can’t be mixed up in it.  He’s past caring for Sarah, poor old girl.”

“She isn’t past caring for him.  She isn’t past anything,” sobbed Mrs. Ransome.

“Don’t be a fool, Topsy.  There isn’t any harm in poor old Toodles.  Majendie’s a jolly sight safer with Toodles, I can tell you, than he is with that wife of his.”

“Has she come home, then?”

“She came yesterday afternoon.  You saw what he was like last night.  If I’d left him to himself this morning he’d have drunk himself into a fit.  When a sober—­a fantastically sober man does that—­”

“What does it mean?”

“It generally means that he’s in a pretty bad way.  And,” added Dick pensively, “they call poor Toodles a dangerous woman.”

All night the yacht lay in Scarby harbour.

CHAPTER XXXVII

It was nine o’clock on Sunday evening.  Majendie was in Scarby, in the hotel on the little grey parade, where he and Anne had stayed on their honeymoon.

Lady Cayley was with him.  She was with him in the sitting-room which had been his and Anne’s.  They were by themselves.  The Ransomes were dining with friends in another quarter of the town.  He had accepted Sarah’s invitation to dine with her alone.

The Ransomes had tried to drag him away, and he had refused to go with them.  He had very nearly quarrelled with the Ransomes.  They had been irritating him all day, till he had been atrociously rude to them.  He had told Ransome to go to a place where, as Ransome had remarked, he could hardly have taken Mrs. Ransome.  Then he had explained gently that he had had enough knocking about for one day, that his head ached abominably, and that he wished they would leave him alone.  It was all he wanted.  Then they had left him alone, with Sarah.  He was glad to be with her.  She was the only person who seemed to understand that all he wanted was to be let alone.