She was so amazed that for a moment she wildly thought he had mistaken it in the darkness for his tobacco pouch.  Then, jumping with a shock to the conclusion that even the unsympathetic Mr. Gunning shared most men’s views about not wasting an opportunity, she removed her hand with a jerk.

“Oh!  I beg your pardon!” said Rupert pusillanimously.  Miss Fitzroy fell back again on the tobacco pouch theory.

At this moment the glowing end of a cigar deviated from its orbit 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 Fanny 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 Fanny, “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 Fanny Fitz magnificently.  “Did rather well too!”

“Capital!” said Captain Carteret vaguely.  His acquaintance with Fanny 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 Nassau 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 ownership; 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.