shall be ready to start as soon as you come aboard, my lord," he said.
"Good!" said Saltash lightly. "I may be late, or—more probably—very early. Leave the gangway for me! I'll let you know when I'm aboard."
He got up as if he moved on springs and leaned against the rail, looking down quizzically at the man who sat stolidly smoking in the deck-chair. No two people could have formed a stronger contrast—the yacht's captain, fair-bearded, with the features of a Viking—the yacht's owner, dark, alert, with a certain French finesse about him that gave a strange charm to a personality that otherwise might have been merely fantastic.
Suddenly he laughed. "Do you know, Larpent, I often think to myself what odd tricks Fate plays? You for instance—you, the captain of a private yacht when you ought to be roving the high seas in a Flying Dutchman! You probably were a few generations ago."
"Ah!" Larpent said, through a cloud of smoke. "Life isn't what it was."
"It's an infernal fraud, most of it," said Saltash. "Always promising and seldom fulfilling!"
"No good expecting too much," said Larpent.
"True!" said Saltash. "On the other hand it isn't always wise to be too easily satisfied." His look became suddenly speculative. "Have you ever been in love, Larpent?"
The big man in the deck-chair made a sharp movement and spilt some cigar-ash on his coat. He sat up deliberately and brushed it off. Saltash watched him with mischievous eyes.
"Well?" he said.
Larpent leaned back again, puffing forth a thick cloud of smoke. "Once," he said briefly.
"Only once?" gibed Saltash. "Man alive! Why, I've had the disease scores of times, and you are half a generation older than I am!"
"I know," Larpent's eyes dwelt unblinking upon the sparkling blue of the water beyond the rail. "You've had it so often that you take it lightly."
Saltash laughed. "You apparently took it like the plague."
"I didn't die of it," said Larpent grimly.
"Perhaps the lady did!" suggested Saltash.
"No. She didn't die either." Larpent's eyes came slowly upwards to the mocking eyes above them. "For all I know she may be living now," he said.
Saltash's grin became a grimace. "Oh, heavens, Larpent! And you've had indigestion ever since? How long ago is it? Twenty years?"
"About that," said Larpent.
"Heavens!" said Saltash again. "I should like to see the woman who could hold me after twenty years!"
"So should I," said Larpent dryly.
Saltash snapped his fingers. "She doesn't exist, my good fellow! But if she did—by Jove, what a world it would be!"
Larpent grunted sardonically. "It wouldn't be large enough to hold you, my lord."
Saltash stretched his arms wide. "Well, I'm going ashore to-night. Who knows what the gods may send? Wish me luck!"
Larpent surveyed the restless figure with a sort of stony humour. "I wish you a safe return," he said.
Saltash laughed and went away along the deck with a monkey-like spring that was curiously characteristic of him. There was nothing of the sailor's steady poise about him.
The little Italian town that clung to the slopes that rose so steeply from the sea shone among its terraced gardens like a many-coloured jewel in the burning sunset. The dome of its Casino gleamed opalescent in its centre—a place for wonder—a place for dreams. Yet Saltash's expression as he landed on the quay was one of whimsical discontent. He had come nearly a fortnight ago to be amused, but somehow the old pleasures had lost their relish and he was only bored.
"I'm getting old," he said to himself with a grimace of disgust.
But he was not old. He was barely six-and-thirty. He had had the world at his feet too long, that was all.
There was to be a water-side fête that night at Valrosa, and the promenade and bandstand were wreathed with flowers and fairy-lights. It was getting late in the season, and it would probably be the last. Saltash surveyed the preparations with very perfunctory interest as he sauntered up to the hotel next to the Casino where he proposed to dine.
A few people he knew were staying there, and he looked forward to a more or less social evening. At least he could count on a welcome and a rubber of bridge if he felt so inclined. Or there was the Casino itself if the gambling mood should take him. But he did not feel much like gambling. He wanted something new. None of the old stale amusements appealed to him tonight. He was feeling very ancient and rather dilapidated.
He went up the steps under the cypress-trees that led from terrace to terrace, pausing at each landing-place to look out over the wonderful sea that was changing every moment with the changing glow of the sunset. Yes, it was certainly a place for dreams. Even old Larpent felt the charm—Larpent who had fallen in love twenty years ago for the first and last time!
An irrepressible chuckle escaped him. Funny old Larpent! The wine of the gods had evidently been too strong a brew for him. It was obvious that he had no desire to repeat the dose.
At his last halting-place he stood longer to drink in the beauty of the evening before entering the hotel. The sea had the pearly tint shot with rose of the inside of an oyster-shell. The sky-line was receding, fading into an immense calm. The shadows were beginning to gather. The sun had dipped out of sight.
The tinkle of a lute rose from one of the hidden gardens below him. He stood and listened with sentimental eyes and quizzically twitching mouth. Everything in this wonder-world was ultra-sweet to-night. And yet—and yet—
Suddenly another sound broke through the stillness, and in a moment he had sprung to alertness. It was a cry—a sharp, wrung cry from the garden close to him, the garden of the hotel, and instantly following it a flood of angry speech in a man's voice and the sound of blows.
"Damnation!" said Saltash, and sprang for a narrow wooden door in the stone wall a few yards higher up.
It opened to his imperious hand, and he found himself in a dark little shrubbery behind an arbour that looked out to the sea. It was in this arbour that the scuffle was taking place, and in a second he had forced his way through the intervening shrubs and was at the entrance.
"Damnation!" he burst forth again furiously. "What are you doing? Leave that boy alone!"
A man in evening-dress was gripping a fair-haired lad, who wore the hotel-livery, by the back of his neck and raining merciless blows upon his uncovered head. He turned, sharply straightening himself, at Saltash's tempestuous entrance, and revealed to the newcomer the deeply-suffused countenance of the hotel-manager.
Their recognition was mutual. He flung the boy into a corner and faced his patron, breathing hard, his black eyes still fiercely gleaming.
"Ah! It is milord!" he said, in jerky English, and bowed punctiliously though he was still shaking with rage. "What can I do for you, milord?"
"What the
