Part 7 (1/2)

At this moment the glowing end of a cigar deviated from its...o...b..t on the deck and approached them.

”Is that you, Gunning? I thought it was your voice,” said the owner of the cigar.

”Yes, it is,” said Mr. Gunning, in a tone singularly lacking in encouragement. ”Thought I saw you at dinner, but couldn't be sure.”

As a matter of fact, no one could have been more thoroughly aware than he of Captain Carteret's presence in the saloon.

”I thought so too!” said f.a.n.n.y Fitz, from the darkness, ”Captain Carteret wouldn't look my way!”

Captain Carteret gave a somewhat exaggerated start of discovery, and threw his cigar over the side. He had evidently come to stay.

”How was it I didn't see you at the Horse Show?” he said.

”The only people one ever sees there are the people one doesn't want to see,” said f.a.n.n.y, ”I could meet no one except the auctioneer from Craffroe, and he always said the same thing. 'Fearful sultry, Miss Fitzroy! Have ye a purchaser yet for your animal, Miss Fitzroy? Ye have not! Oh, fie, fie!' It was rather funny at first, but it palled.”

”I was only there one day,” said Captain Carteret; ”I wish I'd known you had a horse up, I might have helped you to sell.”

”Thanks! I sold all right,” said f.a.n.n.y Fitz magnificently. ”Did rather well too!”

”Capital!” said Captain Carteret vaguely. His acquaintance with f.a.n.n.y extended over a three-day shooting party in Kildare, and a dance given by the detachment of his regiment at Enniscar, for which he had come down from the depot. It was not sufficient to enlighten him as to what it meant to her to own and sell a horse for the first time in her life.

”By-the-bye, Gunning,” he went on, ”you seemed to be having a lively time in Na.s.sau Street yesterday! My wife and I were driving in from the polo, and we saw you in the thick of what looked like a street row. Some one in the club afterwards told me it was a horse you had only just bought at the Show that had come to grief. I hope it wasn't much hurt?”

There was a moment of silence--astonished, inquisitive silence on the part of Miss Fitzroy temporary cessation of the faculty of speech on that of Mr. Gunning. It was the moment, as he reflected afterwards, for a clean, decisive lie, a denial of all owners.h.i.+p; either that, or the instant flinging of Captain Carteret overboard.

Unfortunately for him, he did neither; he lied partially, timorously, and with that clinging to the skirts of the truth that marks the novice.

”Oh, she was all right,” he said, his face purpling heavily in the kindly darkness. ”What was the polo like, Carteret?”

”But I had no idea that you had bought a horse!” broke in f.a.n.n.y Fitz, in high excitement. ”Why didn't you tell Maudie and me? What is it like?”

”Oh, it's--she's just a cob--a grey cob--I just picked her up at the end of the show.”

”What sort of a cob? Can she jump? Are you going to ride her with Freddy's hounds?” continued the implacably interested f.a.n.n.y.

”I bought her as--as a trapper, and to do a bit of carting,” replied Rupert, beginning suddenly to feel his powers of invention awakening; ”she's quite a common brute. She doesn't jump.”

”She seems to have jumped pretty well in Na.s.sau Street,” remarked Captain Carteret; ”as well as I could see in the crowd, she didn't strike me as if she'd take kindly to carting.”

”Well, I do think you might have told us about it!” reiterated f.a.n.n.y Fitz. ”Men are so ridiculously mysterious about buying or selling horses. I simply named my price and got it. _I_ see nothing to make a mystery about in a deal; do you, Captain Carteret?”

”Well, that depends on whether you are buying or selling,” replied Captain Carteret.

But Fate, in the shape of a turning tide and a consequent roll, played for once into the hands of Rupert Gunning. The boat swayed slowly, but deeply, and a waft of steam blew across Miss Fitzroy's face. It was not mere steam; it had been among hot oily things, stealing and giving odour. f.a.n.n.y Fitz was not ill, but she knew that she had her limits, and that conversation, save of the usual rudimentary kind with the stewardess, were best abandoned.

Miss Fitzroy's movements during the next two and a half months need not be particularly recorded. They included--

1. A week in London, during which the sixty pounds, or a great part of it, acquired by the sale of the Connemara mare, pa.s.sed imperceptibly into items, none of which, on a strict survey of expenditure, appeared to exceed three s.h.i.+llings and nine pence.