“Is it the Russian business again? You do not look very much troubled about it.”
“Ah, that is--that is--” he stammered in apparent confusion, then blurted out, “because you--because I am sitting here. Although I have met you but once before, it seems somehow as if I had known you always, and my slight anxiety that I told you of fades away in your presence. I hope you don’t think I am forward in saying this, but really to-night, when I saw you at the head of the gangway, I could scarcely refrain from going directly to you and greeting you. I am afraid I made rather a hash of it with Captain Kempt. He is too much of a gentleman to have shown any surprise at my somewhat boisterous accosting of him, and you know I didn’t remember him at all, but I saw that you were under his care, and chanced it. Luckily it seems to have been Captain Kempt after all, but I fear I surprised him, taking him by storm, as it were.”
“I thought you did it very nicely,” said Dorothy, “and, indeed, until this moment I hadn’t the least suspicion that you didn’t recognize him. He is a dear old gentleman, and I’m very fond of him.”
“I say,” said the Lieutenant, lowering his voice, “I nearly came a cropper when I spoke of that Russian affair before your friend. I was thinking of--of--well, I wasn’t thinking of Miss Kempt--”
“Oh, she never noticed anything,” said Dorothy hurriedly. “You got out of that, too, very well. I thought of telling her I had met you before while she and I were in New York together, but the opportunity never seemed--well, I couldn’t quite explain, and, indeed, didn’t wish to explain my own inexplicable conduct at the bank, and so trusted to chance. If you had greeted me first tonight, I suppose”--she smiled and looked up at him--“I suppose I should have brazened it out somehow.”
“I have walked up and down every street, lane and alley in Bar Harbor, hoping to catch a glimpse of you. I have haunted the town, and all the time you were away.”
“No wonder the Captain frowns at you! Have you been neglecting your duty?”
“Well, I have been stretching my shore leave just a little bit. I wanted to apologize for talking so much about myself as we walked from the bank.”
“It was very interesting, and, if you remember, we walked farther than I had intended.”