What a change had come in their relations! They knew that many eyes were watching them. Their words, if spoken above a whisper, would be audible. There could be no demonstration, scarcely even a sign of understanding or affection. Yet there was the attitude of perfect confidence. And when their eyes met, they spoke a language which both understood.
"This scene must have grown very familiar to you in the last two and a half months," he said.
"Yes," she replied. "For that reason one is apt to pass over many of the features of it without noting them. I want to impress on my memory every detail."
"Isn't it strange," he said in a very low tone, "that this little port in a strange land, should so quickly have become a sacred spot to us?"
"The most sacred spot in all the world," she replied softly.
Some one called to them, and they both turned at once, and stood side by side facing the company.
"What a magnificent-looking pair they make!" exclaimed Mrs. Thomson, in a sudden enthusiasm forgetting that the voice would carry to the ears of all present.
"Was that what you called us to hear?" Miss MacAllister flashed back. "It certainly was worth while. Do you not think so, Dr. Sinclair?" She laughed gaily, a little defiantly, for she had seen the expression on her mother's face.
"I certainly do. And I'm proud to shine with the reflected light of beauty," he replied.
She turned hastily to the rail again, to hide her blushes. Her mother set her lips very tightly together, lifted her head very high, and sniffed. She was more intent than ever on forcing her daughter to marry Carteret. Whatever doubts of his suitability to be a good husband she may have entertained, had vanished with his actual succession to the title. A peerage can cover a multitude of sins.
"All aboard!" rang out in English and Chinese. Men sprang to the hawsers to cast off. At that instant a sedan chair, with sweating bearers on the run, reached the dock and was dropped at the end of the gang plank. An unusually pretty Chinese girl of seventeen or eighteen years, richly dressed, and bearing in her arms a child of a few months old, stepped hastily out of it, and ran for the gangway as fast as her bound feet would carry her. One look at the child was enough to learn its story. Almost as dark as a Chinese in complexion, the features were distinctly European. It was a Eurasian, the child of a European father and an Asiatic mother.