"gp24w10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parker Gilbert)

"Your brother is a cautious fellow." Then, hurriedly: "He is quite right
to express no opinion as to any mystery. Least said soonest mended."

"You mean that it is proper not to discuss professional matters in
society?"

"That's it." A change had passed over Dibbs's face--it was slightly
paler, but his voice was genial and inconsequential.

"Come and sit down at the Point," she said.

They went to a cliff which ran out from one corner of the garden, and sat
down on a bench. Before them stretched the harbour, dotted with sails;
men-of-war lay at anchor, among them the little Ruby, Commander Dibbs's
cruiser. Pleasure-steamers went hurrying along to many shady harbours;
a tall-masted schooner rode grandly in between the Heads, balanced with
foam; and a beach beneath them shone like opal: it was a handsome sight.

For a time they were silent. At last he said: "I know I haven't much to
recommend me. I'm a little beggar--nothing to look at; I'm pretty poor;
I've had no influence to push me on; and just at the critical point in my
career--when I was expecting promotion--I get this set-back, and lose
your good opinion, which is more to me, though I say it bluntly like a
sailor, than the praise of all the Lords of the Admiralty, if it could
be got. You see, I always was ambitious; I was certain I'd be a captain;
I swore I'd be an admiral one day; and I fell in love with the best girl
in the world, and said I'd not give up thinking I would marry her until
and unless I saw her wearing another man's name--and I don't know that
I should even then."

"Now that sounds complicated--or wicked," she said, her face turned away
from him.

"Believe me, it is not complicated; and men marry widows sometimes."

"You are shocking," she said, turning on him with a flush to her cheek
and an angry glitter in her eye. "How dare you speak so cold-bloodedly
and thoughtlessly?"

"I am not cold-blooded or thoughtless, nor yet shocking. I only speak
what is in my mind with my usual crudeness. I know it sounds insolent of
me, but, after all, it is only being bold with the woman for whom--half-
disgraced, insignificant, but unquenchable fellow as I am--I'd do as much
as, and, maybe, dare more for than any one of the men who would marry her
if they could."

"I like ambitious men," she said relenting, and meditatively pushing
the grass with her tennis-racket; "but ambition isn't everything, is it?
There must be some kind of fulfilment to turn it into capital, as it