“I, at any rate, am not an old lady,” Mrs Ewing remarked, with a joyous smile.  “My yellow fringes and things are all my own, and so is my complexion, and so are my teeth.”

Her smile widened to reveal their pearly excellence.  She took his hand, and rubbed the back of it on her downy cheek, and laid the palm on her soft, thick locks.  Even yet she did not see that anything was the matter, confident in her still young beauty, and in the fact that he now knew for certain that the bulk of her husband’s property was hers.  How often she had wondered whether he knew or not, feeling sure that he must have heard the news at some of the many ports he had put into since it had become a matter of public knowledge, and why he allowed days and weeks, even months, to pass without making a sign.  There had always been the cables, anyway.  She put it down to his delicacy, his sense of the awkwardness of the situation, his consideration for her.

“We will have tea first,” she said, touching the bell-button.  “Then we shall not be disturbed any more.  We can talk till dinner-time.  Oh, how I wish you could stay for dinner, and a long, long evening!  But it is better not to do things of that sort yet, don’t you think?  Better not to run risks of making scandal now that there’s no longer any need for it.”

“Much better,” said Captain Carey firmly.

“And, after all, there are lots of ways that we can meet without doing anything improper.  I have thought of heaps.  I can go to Sydney—­I can go home, for that matter; I am a perfectly free agent.  And we have now less than three-quarters of a year.  Guthrie, I want you to let me have the twelve months good.  It is a long wait, I know, but we should feel the benefit of it afterwards—­”

“Hush-sh!”

She glanced down the room in alarm, and saw the door open to admit the servant she had summoned.  He brought teapot and kettle, hot cakes and muffins, and arranged them with unnecessary carefulness on the little table by the fireside.  Hostess and guest watched his slow manoeuvres with an impatient but fascinated gaze, and tried to think about something to talk about for his edification, and could not.

“Thank you, Willis; that will do, Willis.  I’ll ring if I want anything else.  I don’t know, Captain Carey, whether you are one of those people who despise tea and cake—­”

They were alone once more.  Captain Carey refused the proffered refreshment.  Mrs Ewing, making no effort to persuade him, took a few mouthfuls hastily; then she set her cup down, and with a quick flirt of the hand, extinguished the two pink lamps.  They were old-fashioned gas-lamps too.

“We don’t want lights to talk by,” she said, in a casual way.  “The firelight is enough.  I think firelight at this hour so much the pleasantest, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” he responded desperately, and indeed was glad of the shelter of a shadow on his face; but he said to himself, with clenched hands and a long indrawn breath, “Now comes the tug-of-war.”