Chesham returned and handed Drummond a letter.

“Will you excuse me a moment?” he said, and as she looked at him he flattered himself that he noticed a trace of anxiety in her eyes.  He tore open the missive.

“By Jove!” he cried.

“What is it?” she could not prevent herself from saying, leaning forward.

“I am ordered home.  The Admiralty commands me to take the first steamer for England.”

“Is that serious?”

He laughed with well-feigned hilarity.

“Oh, no, not serious; it’s just their way of doing things.  They might easily have allowed me to come home in my own ship.  My only fear is I shall have to take the train for New York early to-morrow morning.  But,” he said, holding out his hands, “it is not serious if you allow me to write to you, and if you will permit me to hope that I may receive an answer.”

She placed her hand in his, this time without hesitation.

“You may write,” she said, “and I will reply.  I trust it is not serious.”

CHAPTER V

 After the opera is over

In mid-afternoon of the day following the entertainment on board the “Consternation” our two girls were seated opposite one another under the rafters of the sewing room, in the listless, desultory manner of those who have not gone home till morning, till daylight did appear.  The dominant note of a summer cottage is the rocking-chair, and there were two in the sewing room, where Katherine and Dorothy swayed gently back and forth as they talked.  They sat close to the low, broad window which presented so beautiful a picture of the blue Bay and the white shipping.  The huge “Consternation” lay moored with her broadside toward the town, all sign of festivity already removed from hull and rigging, and, to the scarcely slumber-satisfied eyes of the girls, something of the sadness of departure seemed to hang as a haze around the great ship.  The girls were not discussing the past, but rather anticipating the future; forecasting it, with long, silent pauses intervening.

“So you will not stay with us?  You are determined to turn your wealthy back on the poor Kempt family?” Katherine was saying.

“But I shall return to the Kempt family now and then, if they will let me.  I must get away for a time and think.  My life has suddenly become all topsy-turvy, and I need to get my bearings, as does a ship that has been through a storm and lost her reckoning.”

“‘She dunno where she are,’ as the song says.”

“Exactly:  that is the state of things.”

“I think it’s too bad, Dorothy, that you did not allow us to make public announcement of your good fortune.  Just imagine what an ovation you would have had on board the cruiser last night if it had been known that the richest woman in that assemblage was a pretty, shy little creature sitting all by herself, and never indulging in even one dance.”