Adeline swam forward to Mrs. Bunting and cried with a note of triumph in her voice: "It is all settled. Everything is settled. He has won them all and he is to contest Hythe."
Quite involuntarily her eyes must have met the Sea Lady's.
It is of course quite impossible to say what she found there—or indeed what there was to find there then. For a moment they faced riddles, and then the Sea Lady turned her eyes with a long-deferred scrutiny to the man's face, which she probably saw now closely for the first time. One wonders whether it is just possible that there may have been something, if it were no more than a gleam of surprise and inquiry, in that meeting of their eyes. Just for a moment she held his regard, and then it shifted inquiringly to Mrs. Bunting.
That lady intervened effusively with an "Oh! I forgot," and introduced them. I think they went through that without another meeting of the foils of their regard. "You back?" said Fred to Chatteris, touching his arm, and Chatteris confirmed this happy guess.
The Bunting girls seemed to welcome Adeline's enviable situation rather than Chatteris as an individual. And Mabel's voice could be heard approaching. "Oughtn't they to see me play it out, Mr. Chatteris?"
"Hullo, Harry, my boy!" cried Mr. Bunting, who was cultivating a bluff manner. "How's Paris?"
"How's the fishing?" said Harry.
And so they came into a vague circle about this
382
