CHAPTER XII

That evening the fitful and gusty wind increased to a gale which swept the land with devastating force, breaking down or uprooting great trees that had withstood the storms of centuries, and torrential rain fell, laying whole tracts of country under water.  All round the coast the sea was lashed into a tossing tumult, the waves rolling in like great green walls of water streaked with angry white as though flashed with lightning, and the weather reports made the usual matter-of-fact statement that “Cross-Channel steamers made rough passages.”  Winds and waves, however, had no disturbing effect on the mental or physical balance of Amadis de Jocelyn, who, wrapped in a comfortable fur-lined overcoat, sat in a sheltered corner on the deck of the Calais boat, smoking a good cigar and congratulating himself on the ease with which he had slipped out of what threatened to have been a very unpleasant and embarrassing entanglement.

“If she were an ordinary sort of girl it wouldn’t matter so much,” he thought—­“She would be practical, with sufficient vanity not to care,—­she would see more comedy than tragedy in the whole thing.  But with her romantic ideas about love, and her name in everybody’s mouth, I might have got into the devil’s own mess!  I wonder where she went to when she left the studio?  Straight home, I suppose, to Miss Leigh,—­will she tell Miss Leigh?  No—­I think not!—­she’s not likely to tell anybody.  She’ll keep it all to herself.  She’s a silly little fool!—­but she’s—­she’s loyal!”

Yes, she was loyal!  Of that there could be no manner of doubt.  Callous and easy-going man of the world as he had ever been and ever would be, the steadfast truth and tender devotion of the poor child moved him to a faint sense of shamed admiration.  On the inky blackness of the night he saw her face, floating like a vision,—­ her little uplifted, praying hands,—­he heard her voice, piteously sweet, crying “Amadis!  Amadis!  Say you didn’t mean it!—­say it isn’t true!—­I thought you loved me, dear!—­you told me so!”

The waves hissed round the rolling steamer, and every now and again white tongues of foam darted at him from the crests of the heaving waters, yet amid all the shattering roar and turbulence of the storm, he could not get the sound of that pleading voice out of his ears.

“Silly little fool!” he repeated over and over again with inward vexation—­“Nothing could be more absurd than her way of looking at life as though it was only made for love!  Yet—­she suited her name!—­she was really the most ‘innocent’ creature I have ever known!  And—­and—­she loved me!”