soreness. It was good discipline.
It would give her a sense of values. Should she ever get Jaffery back
again, with no Liosha hanging round his neck, I was certain that not
only would she forgive past mishandling, but for the sake of keeping him
would put up with a little more. Whether she would marry him was another
story. I had every reason to believe that she would not. Adrian reigned
her bosom's lord. In her worshipping fidelity she never wavered. She
regarded a second marriage with horror. That was comprehensible enough,
with her husband but seven months dead. No, should she ever get Jaffery
back, I didn't think she would marry him; but beyond doubt she would
treat him with more consideration and respect. These, of course, were my
conjectures and deductions (confirmed by Barbara) from the patent fact
that she found herself lost without Jaffery and that she was furiously
jealous of Liosha.

It was several weeks before we saw her again. August arrived. Barbara
and I played the ever-fresh summer comedy. I swore by all my gods I
would not leave Northlands. I went on vowing until I arrived with a
mountain of luggage, a wife and a child and a maid at a great hotel on
the Lido. Our days were unimportant. We bathed in the Adriatic. We
revisited familiar churches and picture galleries in Venice. We mingled
with a cosmopolitan crowd and developed the complexions (not only in our
faces) of an Othello family. Doria, too, made holiday abroad. Every
August, Mr. Jornicroft repaired the ravages of eleven months' civic and
other feasting at Marienbad, and Doria, as she had done before her
marriage, accompanied him. She and Barbara exchanged letters about
nothing in particular. The time passed smoothly.

Once or twice we had word from our runagates. The fury of the sea having
subsided after they had left Bordeaux, they had settled down to the
normal life of shipboard, and Jaffery took his turn with the hands,
coiled ropes, sweated over cargo, and kept his watch. Liosha, we were
given to understand, besides helping in the galley and the cabin and
swabbing decks, found much delight in painting the ship's boats with
paint which Jaffery had bought for the purpose at Bordeaux. She had
struck up a friendship with the first mate, who, possessing a camera,
had taken their photographs. They sent us one of the two standing side
by side, and a more villainous-looking yet widely smiling pair you could
not wish to see. Both wore sailors' caps