But he caught at Harriet's hand even while they all three laughed, for it was patent to everybody that Harriet had no idea what his jokes were about, which was the amusing thing of all, seeing that it was the Major's humour that she confessed had attracted her. And yet the eyes of the man often deepened and glowed as he watched her move about the house, for she made even the trivial duties seem beautiful because of her unconscious earnestness and her joy in their doing. CHAPTER THIRTEEN On the return to Aden, that last hour on the train, Alexina was trembling. She was glad, glad to be back, yet of the actual moment of arrival she was afraid. It was Peter, and alone, who met her at the station with the wagonette. The high ecstasy of her shrinking fell like collapsing walls beneath her. Life was grey, level, flat. "Mrs. Garnier's po'ly this mornin'," Pete told her as they drove homeward. "Mis' Cha'lotte wouldn't leave her to come, and Mr. Willy, he's been gone for a week now, down to the grasswater with a pahty of gen'l'men, as guide." She felt strangely tired and quiet. It was going to be hard to seem as glad to be back as she ought. Yet the world, as they drove out to Nancy, was rioting in bud, and new leaf and bloom. Magnolias were uplifting giant ivory cups of heavy sweetness; every tree-trunk, rail and stump bore a clambering weight of yellow jasmine bloom; the tai-tai drooped pendulous fringes of faintest fragrance, and wild convolvulus ran riot over the palmetto. There were bird-song and sunshine and ecstasy everywhere. And she could not feel glad, she could not feel glad. Promptly Molly dragged the girl off to their room. She looked slighter and more wistful-eyed and bored to death. "You promised me that we would go early in March, if I stayed out here--you promised, Malise. And I've stayed. You promised we'd go to The Bay, where there are people and hotels and it's gay. And it's March now. You look so tall and cold, Malise! what's the matter?" Alexina, restless and absent, wandered out on the porch to the Captain. She chatted to him about Louisville, but there were sharpening angles about his face that made her heart ache. She went up to Mrs. Leroy's room. "I don't know what we are going to do, Alexina," Charlotte told her. "Willy said I was not to think or worry about it, I was to put it all aside until he got back. But it hurts. He went off looking so gaunt. I don't believe he slept a night through after the freeze; all hours I could hear him up, walking around, but he don't like it if I notice, you know." Alexina dropped down and put her head in Charlotte's lap and cried, and Charlotte patted the girl's wealth of shining hair and cried too. But since he could go without a sign to her, Alexina could go too. That day she wrote for rooms at The Bay Hotel. The answer came that she could have what she wanted by the eighth. She told Mrs. Leroy she and Molly would go on that date.