“But I don’t want you to, Cassie,” he said.  “You’re talking like a baby.  What’s the good of waiting when I am never coming back?”

“You say that now,” she exclaimed, “but my words will come back to you in Injya when you grow tired of her ladyship’s coldness and disdain; and I’m silly enough to think you’ll find them a comfort to you out there, with nothing to do but to think and think, and be miserable.”

VI

The next day he found Cassie in a more cheerful humour and excited about the dance.  The house was all upset and she was busy with a dozen of her girl friends in decorating the hall and drawing-room, taking up the carpets, arranging for the supper and the cloakrooms, and immersed generally in the thousand and one tasks that fall on a hostess-to-be.  Frank put himself at her orders and spent the better part of the afternoon in running errands and tacking up flags and branches; and after an hilarious tea, in the midst of all the litter and confusion, he went back to the ship somewhat after five o’clock.  As he was pulled out in a shore boat he was surprised to pass a couple of coal lighters coming from the Minnehaha, and to see her winches busily hoisting in stores from a large launch alongside.  He ran up the ladder, and seeing the captain asked him what was up.

“Sailing orders, Chief,” said Captain Landry, enjoying his amazement.  “We’ll be off the ground in half an hour, eastward bound!” “But I wasn’t told anything,” cried Frank.  “I never got any orders.”

“The little lady said you wasn’t to be disturbed,” said the captain, “and she took it on herself to order your staff to go ahead.  I guess you’ll find a pretty good head of steam already!”

Frank ran to the side and called back his boat, giving the man five shillings to take a note at once to Cassie.  He had no time for more than a few lines, but he could not go to sea without at least one word of farewell.  They were cutting the anchor and were already under steerage way when Cassie came off herself in a launch and passed up a letter directed to the chief engineer.  It reached him in the engine-room, where he, not knowing that she was but a few feet distant, was spared the sight of her pale and despairing face.

The letter itself was almost incoherent.  She knew, she said, whom she had to thank for his departure.  That vixen, that hussy, that stuck-up minx, who treated him like a dog and yet grudged him to another, who, God help her, loved him too well for her own good—­ it was her ladyship she had to thank for spoiling everything and carrying him away.  Was he not man enough to assert himself and leave a ship where he was put upon so awful?  Let him ask her mightiness in two words, yes or no; and then when he had come down from the clouds and had learned the truth, poor silly fool—­then let him come back to his Cassie, who loved him so dear, and who (if she did say it herself) had a heart worth fifty of his mistress and didn’t need no powder to set off her complexion.  It ended with a piteous appeal to his compassion and besought him to write to her from the nearest port.