‘There’s no one else,’ she said, ’who would have behaved to me so kindly and so nobly.’

’Nonsense!  But that’s nonsense, too.  Let us admire each other; it does us good, and is so very pleasant.’

’I shall say goodbye to no one but you.  Let people think and say of me what they like; I don’t care a snap of the fingers.  In deed, I hate people.’

‘Both sexes impartially?’

It was a peculiarity of their intimate converse that they never talked of men, and a jest of this kind had novelty sufficient to affect Alma with a slight confusion.

‘Impartially —­ quite,’ she answered.

’Do make an exception in favour of Hugh’s friend, Mr. Rolfe.  I abandon all the rest.’

Alma betrayed surprise.

‘Strange!  I really thought you didn’t much like Mr. Rolfe,’ she said, without any show of embarrassment.

’I didn’t when I first knew him; but he grows upon one.  I think him interesting; he isn’t quite easy to understand.’

‘Indeed he isn’t.’

They smiled with the confidence of women fancy-free, and said no more on the subject.

Carnaby came home to dinner brisk and cheerful; he felt better than for many a day.  Brightly responsive, Sibyl welcomed his appearance in the drawing-room.

’Saw old Rolfe for a minute at the club.  In a vile temper.  I wonder whether he really has lost money, and won’t confess?  Yet I don’t think so.  Queer old stick.’

‘By-the-bye, what is his age?’ asked Alma unconcernedly.

‘Thirty-seven or eight.  But I always think of him as fifty.’

‘I suppose he’ll never marry?’

’Rolfe?  Good heavens, no!  Too much sense —­ hang it, you know what I mean!  It would never suit him.  Can’t imagine such a thing.  He gets more and more booky.  Has his open-air moods, too, and amuses me with his Jingoism.  So different from his old ways of talking; but I didn’t care much about him in those days.  Well, now, look here, I’ve had a talk with a man I know, about Honolulu, and I’ve got all sorts of things to tell you. —­ Dinner?  Very glad; I’m precious hungry.’

CHAPTER 7

About the middle of December, Alma Frothingham left England, burning with a fever of impatience, resenting all inquiry and counsel, making pretence of settled plans, really indifferent to everything but the prospect of emancipation.  The disaster that had befallen her life, the dishonour darkening upon her name, seemed for the moment merely a price paid for liberty.  The shock of sorrow and dismay had broken innumerable bonds, overthrown all manner of obstacles to growth of character, of power.  She gloried in a new, intoxicating sense of irresponsibility.  She saw the ideal life in a release from all duty and obligation —­ save to herself.