“Only this,--that you will take this valuable which I chance to have with me and give it to him,--explaining that there was no sentimental motive in my retention of it, only the accident of overlooking it at a moment of great commotion.”
He remembered that this event was the famous nuptials that filled the countryside with _éclat_, and the metropolitan newspapers with the names of the guests of distinction and the description of their jewels and gowns. To him, to whom the journals had been sent in France, and to his brother, this tawdry phase of display cheapened the marriage and lowered it, and that it was the splendid superstructure on the ruins of the heart of the jilted lover did not serve to further commend it.
“I wonder that you remembered to return any of the little trinkets,” he remarked. “But, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, you must forgive me for declining to repair your negligence. I really cannot undertake your commission. The relations between my brother and me are peculiarly tender. All my life I can remember almost in every scene that other self, from the time when we were little toddlers in our red coats and toboggan caps.”
He paused, for he saw, at the moment, almost with the distinctness of actuality, the swift little image of himself and its replica in childhood days, scuttling about among the vacant chairs of the deserted deck, snow-balling each other in juvenile joviality in some forgotten winter. He caught himself and went on. “My brother is dear to me and I to him, and I will not allow the shadow you cast to come between us.”
“And you will do nothing in the matter?” Her voice was keen with its plaint of surprise and disappointment.
“Oh, you will easily find another emissary,” he said, rising and standing with one hand on the back of his chair. “Permit me to suggest that you give the thing to Miss Dean. She, evidently, is very well acquainted with Randal. Tell her that it is the key to his heart, and, perhaps, she may unlock it.”
And with that he lifted his hat and left her.
In all riparian estimation the grotesque plight of a craft stranded is more or less a catastrophe. Even in this sequestered nook spectators were not slow to mark, at a distance, the grounding of the _Cherokee Rose_ in the afternoon and to discuss the magnitude and the management of the mishap.