THE OTHER MAN
“Please, Marraine, will you give us your blessing?”
The joyous excitement and relief incidental to the
safe return of the voyagers had spent itself at last,
and now, refreshed and invigorated by a hot bath and
by a meal of more varied constituents than biscuit
and plain chocolate, Magda propounded her question,
a gleam of mirth glancing in her eyes.
Lady Arabella glanced doubtfully from one to the other.
Then a look of undisguised satisfaction dawned in
her face.
“Do you mean——” she
began eagerly.
“We’ve been and gone and got engaged,”
explained Quarrington.
“My dears!” Lady Arabella jumped up with
the agility of twenty rather than seventy and proceeded
to pour out her felicitations. Incidentally she
kissed everybody all round, including Quarrington,
and her keen old hawk’s eyes grew all soft and
luminous like a girl’s.
Coppertop was hugely excited.
“Will the wedding be to-morrow?” he asked
hopefully. “And shall I be a page and carry
the Fairy Lady’s train?”
Magda smiled at him.
“Of course you shall be a page, Topkins.
But the wedding won’t be quite as soon as to-morrow,”
she told him.
“Why not?” insinuated Quarrington calmly.
“There are such things as special licences,
you know.”
“Don’t be silly,” replied Magda
scathingly. “I’ve only just been saved
from drowning, and I don’t propose to take on
such a risk as matrimony till I’ve had time
to recover my nerve.”
Lady Arabella surveyed them both with a species of
irritated approval.
“And to think,” she burst out at last,
indignantly, “of all the hours I’ve spent
having my silly portrait painted and getting cramp
in my stiff old joints, and that even then it needed
Providence to threaten you both with a watery grave
to bring you up to the scratch!”
“Well, we’re engaged now,” submitted
Magda meekly.
Lady Arabella chuckled sardonically.
“If you weren’t, you’d have to be—after
last night!” she commented drily.
“No one need know about last night,” retorted
Magda.
“Huh!” Lady Arabella snorted. “Half
Netherway will know the tale by midday. And you
may be sure your best enemy will hear of it. They
always do.”
“Never mind. It will make an excellent
advertisement,” observed Magda philosophically.
“Can’t you see it in all the papers?—’NARROW
ESCAPE OF THE WIELITZSKA.’ In big capitals.”
They all laughed, realising the great amount of probability
contained in her forecast. And, thanks to an
enterprising young journalist who chanced to be prowling
about Netherway on that particular day, the London
newspapers flared out into large headlines, accompanied
by vivid and picturesque details of the narrow escape
while yachting of the famous dancer and of the well-known
artist, Michael Quarrington—who, in some
of the cheaper papers, was credited with having saved
the Wielitzska’s life by swimming ashore with
her.
