Читать книгу Lancaster's Choice - Alex. McVeigh Miller - Страница 11

Lieutenant De Vere gazed in the most unfeigned astonishment, not to say dismay, at the strange and unexpected sight of Captain Lancaster coolly leading the unknown beauty across the unsteady deck. As he said of himself when relating it afterward, he might have been "knocked down with a feather."

And when he saw that they were coming straight toward him, and that Lancaster had quite an air of proprietorship, and that the girl was looking up with an arch smile at him, he was more astonished than ever, he was almost stupefied with amazement. Did Lancaster know her, really? And why had he kept it to himself, selfish fellow?

And then he was overpoweringly conscious that they had come up to him. He struggled to his feet and came near falling back over the railing into the ocean, out of sheer wrath, for just then Captain Lancaster said, with just a touch of raillery in his tone:

"Miss West, permit me to present my friend, Lieutenant De Vere."

"Lancaster knew her all the while, and he has been chaffing me all this time," flashed angrily through De Vere's mind but he suppressed his rising chagrin and said, with his most elaborate bow:

"I am most happy to know your name, Miss West. I have been longing to know it ever since I met you this afternoon."

"What audacity!" thought Lancaster to himself, with a frown that only grew darker as the girl replied, gayly:

"And I am very glad to know that you are Captain Lancaster's friend. You will help to amuse me on the way over."

She sat down between them, Lancaster on one hand, De Vere on the other. The lieutenant looked across the bright, sparkling young face at his friend.

"Do you mean to tell me that this is the baby?" pointedly.

"Yes."

"But, how—" pausing helplessly.

Lancaster laughed, and Leonora joined her musical treble to his.

"You see, De Vere, there was a mistake all around," he said. "I found out yesterday that the baby existed only in our imaginations."

"You might have told me," De Vere muttered, reproachfully.

"I was reserving a pleasant surprise for you to-day," Lancaster rejoined.

Leonora turned her bright eyes up to his face.

"When did you come aboard?" she inquired, naïvely.

"At the last moment," he replied, rather coldly.

"You were detained?"

"Yes," dryly.

A sudden light broke over De Vere's mind. He laughed provokingly.

"Miss West, would you like to know what detained him?" he inquired.

"Yes," she replied.

"He went up to Blank Street, to fetch you," laughing.

"No?"

"Yes, indeed. Ask him, if you doubt me."

She looked around at Lancaster. There was a flush on his face, a frown between his eyebrows.

"You did not, really, did you?" she asked, naïvely.

"I did," curtly.

"Don't tease him about it. He was furiously angry because you ran away and came by yourself," said De Vere. He was beginning to turn the tables on Lancaster now, and he enjoyed it immensely.