The pier was soon reached, and they enjoyed their walk upon it. The sunlight glinted on the rather turbulent waves of the sea in the distance, but there was not much breeze to be felt on land. When nearing the end of the pier their attention was attracted to a fishing-boat, which was tumbling about rather unaccountably in its efforts to make the harbour.
“It almost looks from here as though it had lost its rudder, Nancy,” remarked Miss Lavinia.
They halted, and stood looking over the side at the object of interest; not particularly noticing that a gentleman stood near them, also looking at the same through an opera-glass. He was spare, of middle height and middle age; his hair was grey, his face pale and impassive; the light over-coat he wore was of fashionable English cut.
“Oh, Lavinia, look, look! It is coming right on to the end of the pier,” cried Ann Preen.
“Hush, Nancy, don’t excite yourself,” said Miss Lavinia, in lowered tones. “It will take care not to do that.”
The gentleman gave a wary glance at them. He saw two ladies dressed alike, in handsome black velvet mantles, and bonnets with violet feathers; by which he judged them to be sisters, though there was no resemblance in face. The elder had clear-cut features, a healthy colour, dark brown hair, worn plain, and a keen, sensible expression. The other was fair, with blue eyes and light ringlets.
“Pardon me,” he said, turning to them, and his accent was that of a gentleman. “May I offer you the use of my glasses?”
“Oh, thank you!” exclaimed Nancy, in a light tone bordering on a giggle; and she accepted the glasses. She was evidently pleased with the offer and with the stranger.
Lavinia, on the contrary, was not. The moment she saw his full face she shrank from it—shrank from him. The feeling might have been as unaccountable as that which came over her when she had been first entering the Petite Maison Rouge; but it was there. However, she put it from her, and thanked him.
“I don’t think I see so well with the glasses as without them; it seems all a mist,” remarked Nancy, who was standing next the stranger.
“They are not properly focused for you. Allow me,” said he, as he took the glasses from her to alter them. “Young eyes need a less powerful focus than elderly ones like mine.”
He spoke in a laughing tone; Nancy, fond of compliments, giggled outright this time. She was approaching forty; he might have been ten years older. They continued standing there, watching the fishing-boat, and exchanging remarks at intervals. When it had made the harbour without accident, the Miss Preens wished him good-morning, and went back down the pier; he took off his hat to them, and walked the other way.
“What a charming man!” exclaimed Nancy, when they were at a safe distance.
“I don’t like him,” dissented Lavinia.
“Not like him!” echoed the other in surprise. “Why, Lavinia, his manners are delightful. I wonder who he is?”
When nearly home, in turning into the Place Ronde, they met an English lady of their acquaintance, the wife of Major Smith. She had been ordering a dozen of vin Picardin from the Maison Rouge. As they stood talking together, the gentleman of the pier passed up the Rue de Tessin. He lifted his hat, and they all, including Mrs. Smith, bowed.
“Do you know him?” quickly asked Nancy, in a whisper.
“Hardly that,” answered Mrs. Smith. “When we were passing the Hôtel des Princes this morning, a gentleman turned out of the courtyard, and he and my husband spoke to one another. The major said to me afterwards that he had formerly been in the—I forget which—regiment. He called him Mr. Fennel.”
Now, as ill-fortune had it, Miss Preen found herself very poorly after she got home. She began to sneeze and cough, and thought she must have taken cold through standing on the pier to watch the vagaries of the fishing-smack.
“I hope you are not going to have the influenza!” cried Nancy, her blue eyes wide with concern.
But the influenza it proved to be. Miss Preen seemed about to have it badly, and lay in bed the next day. Nancy proposed to send Flore for Monsieur Dupuis, but Lavinia said she knew how to treat herself as well as he could treat her.
The next day she was no better. Poor Nancy had to go out alone, or to stay indoors. She did not like doing the latter at all; it was too dull; her own inclination would have led her abroad all day long and every day.
“I saw Captain Fennel on the pier again,” said she to her sister that afternoon, when she was making the tea at Lavinia’s bedside, Flore having carried up the tray.
“I hope you did not talk to him, Ann,” spoke the invalid, as well as she could articulate.
“I talked a little,” said Nancy, turning hot, conscious that she had gossiped with him for three-quarters-of-an-hour. “He stopped to speak to me; I could not walk on rudely.”
“Any way, don’t talk to him again, my dear. I do not like that man.”
“What is there to dislike in him, Lavinia?”
“That I can’t say. His countenance is not a good one; it is shifty and deceitful. He is a man you could never trust.”
“I’m sure I’ve heard you say the same of other people.”
“Because I can read faces,” returned Lavinia.
“Oh—well—I consider Captain Fennel’s is a handsome face,” debated Nancy.
“Why do you call him ‘Captain’?”
“He calls himself so,” answered Nancy. “I suppose it was his rank in the army when he retired. They retain it afterwards by courtesy, don’t they, Lavinia?”
“I am not sure. It depends upon whether they retire in rotation or sell out, I fancy. Mrs. Smith said the major called him Mr. Fennel, and he ought to know. There, I can’t talk any more, Nancy, and the man is nothing to us, that we need discuss him.”
La grippe had taken rather sharp hold of Lavinia Preen, and she was upstairs for ten days. On the first afternoon she went down to the salon, Captain Fennel called, very much to her surprise; and, also to her surprise, he and Nancy appeared to be pretty intimate.
In point of fact, they had met every day, generally upon the pier. Nancy had said nothing about it at home. She was neither sly nor deceitful in disposition; rather notably simple and unsophisticated; but, after Lavinia’s reproof the first time she told about meeting him, she would not tell again.
Miss Preen behaved coolly to him; which he would not appear to see. She sat over the fire, wrapped in a shawl, for it was a cold afternoon. He stayed only a little time, and put his card down on the slab near the stairs when he left. Lavinia had it brought to her.
“Mr. Edwin Fennel.”
“Then he is not Captain Fennel,” she observed. “But, Nancy, what in the world could have induced the man to call here? And how is it you seem to be familiar with him?”
“I have met him out-of-doors, sometimes, while you were ill,” said Nancy. “As to his calling here—he came, I suppose, out of politeness. There’s no harm in it, Lavinia.”
Miss Lavinia did not say there was. But she disliked the man too much to favour his acquaintanceship. Instinct warned her against him.
How little was she prepared for what was to follow! Before she was well out-of-doors again, before she had been anywhere except to church, Nancy gave her a shock. With no end of simperings and blushings, she confessed that she had been asked to marry Captain Fennel.
Had Miss Lavinia Preen been herself politely asked to marry a certain gentleman popularly supposed to reside underground, she would not have been much more indignantly startled. Perhaps “frightened” would be the better word for it.
“But—you would not, Nancy!” she gasped, when she found her voice.
“I don’t know,” simpered foolish Nancy. “I—I—think him very