Manvers was looking meditatively out into the night.
“The chances of being struck are so infinitesimal, Miss Vanderbilt, that I think it must have had a shot at you that time and missed. So by the law of probabilities it will not even aim at you again for a year or two. It really is a great consolation to know that one wouldn’t hear the thunder if one was struck.”
“Why, if you could hear the thunder, it would be all over,” said Miss Bee, with a brilliant inspiration.
“So after each flash we must wait anxiously for the thunder,” said Tom, “and then we shall know we’ve not been struck.”
“I guess there’s no great difficulty in finding out if you’ve been struck,” said Bee. “Popper saw a man struck once, and he went all yellow. Tell me if I am going all yellow, Mr. Manvers. I shan’t try to conceal it.”
“No amount of dissimulation would conceal the fact that one had gone all yellow,” said Manvers.
The worst of the storm was soon over, but the clouds took possession of Hymettus, and continued growling and rumbling there. The two Americans took advantage of the lull to make their way home. “For nothing,” Miss Vanderbilt protested, with shrill vehemence, “will make me get into a buggy during an electric storm;” and Tom and Manvers followed their example, and walked back to their hotel.
Manvers had seen that look on Miss Wrexham’s face at the moment of the flash of lightning, and he determined, wisely or unwisely, to mention it to Tom.
They were the only occupants of the smoking-room, and after getting his cigar under way, he asked the other lazily--
“By the way, what were you saying to Miss Wrexham that made her look like an image of despair? I caught sight of her face for a moment during a flash of lightning, and it looked extraordinary.”
“Yes, I noticed it too,” said Tom carelessly, “and wondered what was the matter. She had been rather upset by sirocco, she said.”
“My dear fellow, girls don’t look like petrified masks of despair because sirocco has been blowing for a couple of hours in the morning.”
“Well, I suppose it must have been something else then,” said Tom.
“What a brilliant solution! I am inclined to agree with you.”
Manvers remained silent for a few moments, balancing in his mind his disinclination to appear officious or meddling, and his desire to perhaps do Tom a service. As a matter of fact he had heard the question which had accompanied that look on Miss Wrexham’s face, and it had confirmed the idea he had long entertained that she was falling in love with Tom, and Tom was not consciously in love with her. His tone of absolute indifference to the subject might be either assumed or natural.