THREE:[Pg 87]She sat staring at the white glare of the opening, and listening to his foot-falls upon the sand.
THREE:[Pg 87]She sat staring at the white glare of the opening, and listening to his foot-falls upon the sand.
THREE:The captain's lips set.
THREE:When all his phrases were quite used up, Stone changed the key. What could be done for Mr. Taylor? Mr. Taylor motioned with his usual urbanity that the burden of speech lay with Cairness. What could he do for Mr. Cairness, then?
THREE:Landor said that he had put in a requisition for kippered mackerel and anchovy paste, and that the commissary was running down so that one got nothing fit to eat. He was in an unpleasant frame of mind, and his first lieutenant, who messed with him, pulled apart a broiled quail that lay, brown and juicy, on its couch of toast and cress, and asked wherein lay the use of taking thought of what you should eat. "Every prospect is vile, and man is worse, and the sooner heaven sends release the better. What is there in a life like this? Six weeks from the nearest approach to civilization, malaria in the air by night and fire by day. Even Mrs. Landor is showing it."
THREE:"Mrs. Landor is very beautiful," Cairness hazarded. He wanted to talk of her, or to make some one else do it.Landor went. Felipa waited for him, already mounted. He mounted his own horse and rode beside her back to the post. They did not speak, and he was conscious above his anger that his fondness for her had been gradually turning to dislike, and was now loathing. He had seen her dragging in the dust before him, pleading abjectly. She had humiliated him and herself in the presence of Cairness, of all men, and he would never forget it. A woman who once grovels at a man's feet has lost thenceforth her power over him.
THREE:"That would depend," she answered with her enigmatical, slow smile; "I could be happy almost anywhere with Mr. Cairness."
THREE:"Where do you want me to go?" he almost moaned, and finished with an oath.
THREE: