Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/124

114 my sweetheart's handwriting. You may guess how eagerly I tore it open, and with what avidity I devoured its contents. From it I gathered that they had arrived at the entrance of the Suez Canal safely; that her father seemed to have recovered his spirits more and more with every mile that separated them from Europe. He was now almost himself again, she said, but still refused with characteristic determination to entertain the smallest notion of me as a son-in-law. But Phyllis herself did not despair of being able to talk him round. Then came a paragraph which struck me as being so peculiar as to warrant my reproducing it here:

"The passengers, what we have seen of them, appear to be, with one exception, a nice enough set of people. That exception, however, is intolerable; his name is Prendergast, and his personal appearance is as objectionable as his behaviour is extraordinary; his hair is snow-white, and his face is deeply pitted with small-pox. This is, of course, not his fault, but it seems somehow to aggravate the distaste I have for him. Unfortunately we were thrown into his company in Naples, and since then the creature has so far presumed upon that introduction, that he scarcely leaves me alone for a moment. Papa does not seem to mind him so much, but I continually thank goodness that, as he leaves the boat in Port Said, the rest of the voyage will be performed without him."

The remainder of the letter has no concern for anyone but myself. I folded it up and put it in my pocket, feeling that if I had been on board the boat I should in all probability have allowed Mr. Prendergast to understand that his company was distasteful and not in the least required. If I could only have foreseen that within a fortnight I was to be enjoying the doubtful