He reached across the table, and grasped her two hands.
“Dorothy, Dorothy,” he cried, “do you mean you would have cabled ‘Yes’?”
“Of course not. I should have cabled ‘Undecided.’ One gets more for one’s money in sending a long word. Then I should have written--” she paused, and he cried eagerly:
“Well, do you know, Dorothy, I am beginning to think my incredible luck will hold, and that you’d have written ‘Yes.’”
“I don’t know about the luck: that would have been the answer.”
He sprang up, bent over her, and she, quite unaffectedly raised her face to his.
“Oh, Alan,” she replied, with quivering voice, “I never thought to see you again. You cannot imagine the long agony of this voyage, and not knowing what had happened.”
“It’s a blessing, Dorothy, you had learned nothing about the Trogzmondoff.”
“Ah, but I did: that’s what frightened me. We have a man on board who was flung for dead from that dreadful rock. The Baltic saved him; his mother, he calls it.”
Drummond picked her up in his arms, and carried her to the luxurious divan which ran along the side of the large room. There they sat down together, out of sight of the stairway.
“Don’t you consider my position poverty? I thought every one over there had a contempt for an income that didn’t run into tens of thousands.”
“I told you, Alan, I had been unused to money, and so your income appears to me quite sufficient.”
“Then you are not afraid to trust in my future?”
“Oh, you dear girl. If you knew how sweet that sounds! Then I may tell you. When I was in London last I ran down to Dartmouth in Devonshire. I shall be stationed there. You see, I have finished my foreign cruising, and Dartmouth is, for a time at least, to be my home. There’s a fine harbor there, green hills and a beautiful river running between them, and I found such a lovely old house; not grand at all, you know, but so cosey and comfortable, standing on the heights overlooking the harbor, in an old garden filled with roses, shrubs, and every kind of flower; vines clambering about the ancient house. Two servants would keep it going like a shot. Dorothy, what do you say?”
Dorothy laughed quietly and whole heartedly.
“It reads like a bit from an old English romance. I’d just love to see such a house.”