I regret to say I stopped before going in.  There had been a revolution in my moral nature.  He waited open-mouthed, breathless, while I looked at him for half a minute.

“And you thought you could keep me out of it,” I said scathingly.

“You said you were going home,” he squeaked miserably.  “You said so.  You said so.”

“I wonder what Captain Ellis will have to say to that excuse,” I uttered slowly with a sinister meaning.

His lower jaw had been trembling all the time and his voice was like the bleating of a sick goat.  “You have given me away?  You have done for me?”

Neither his distress nor yet the sheer absurdity of it was able to disarm me.  It was the first instance of harm being attempted to be done to me—­at any rate, the first I had ever found out.  And I was still young enough, still too much on this side of the shadow line, not to be surprised and indignant at such things.

I gazed at him inflexibly.  Let the beggar suffer.  He slapped his forehead and I passed in, pursued, into the dining room, by his screech:  “I always said you’d be the death of me.”

This clamour not only overtook me, but went ahead as it were on to the verandah and brought out Captain Giles.

He stood before me in the doorway in all the commonplace solidity of his wisdom.  The gold chain glittered on his breast.  He clutched a smouldering pipe.

I extended my hand to him warmly and he seemed surprised, but did respond heartily enough in the end, with a faint smile of superior knowledge which cut my thanks short as if with a knife.  I don’t think that more than one word came out.  And even for that one, judging by the temperature of my face, I had blushed as if for a bad action.  Assuming a detached tone, I wondered how on earth he had managed to spot the little underhand game that had been going on.

He murmured complacently that there were but few things done in the town that he could not see the inside of.  And as to this house, he had been using it off and on for nearly ten years.  Nothing that went on in it could escape his great experience.  It had been no trouble to him.  No trouble at all.

Then in his quiet, thick tone he wanted to know if I had complained formally of the Steward’s action.

I said that I hadn’t—­though, indeed, it was not for want of opportunity.  Captain Ellis had gone for me bald-headed in a most ridiculous fashion for being out of the way when wanted.

“Funny old gentleman,” interjected Captain Giles.  “What did you say to that?”

“I said simply that I came along the very moment I heard of his message.  Nothing more.  I didn’t want to hurt the Steward.  I would scorn to harm such an object.  No.  I made no complaint, but I believe he thinks I’ve done so.  Let him think.  He’s got a fright he won’t forget in a hurry, for Captain Ellis would kick him out into the middle of Asia. . . .”