by this time I was getting somewhat uneasy
about Viola.

It was all very well for Viola to nurse Jevons through his jaundice, she
might have done that out of pure humanity; but she had no business to be
going for walks with the little bounder. Even the charm of his
conversation and his personality (and it _had_ a charm) couldn't
conceal the fact that he was a little bounder. Why, in moments of
excitement he had gestures that must have made her shudder all down her
spine, and more than once I have known his aitches become fugitive,
though, on the whole, I must say he was pretty careful. And Viola was
letting herself in for him. In sheer innocence and recklessness she was
letting herself in. I felt that if ever it should come to getting her out
I would be glad of an ally. Now that I saw what Viola was capable of, I
began to feel some sympathy with her people at Canterbury who had tried
so ineffectually to hold her in.

There was nothing ineffectual about Reggie Thesiger. I suppose he would
have been impressive anyway from the sheer height and breadth of him, his
visible and palpable perfection; but what "had" me was not his
perfection, but the odd likeness to his sister which he combined, and in
some mysterious way reconciled, with it. His face had taken over not only
the dominant and defiant look of hers, exaggerated by his sheer virility;
but it had the very tricks of her charm, even to the uptilted lines of
her mouth; his little black moustache followed and gave accent to them. I
said to myself: "Here is a young man who will not stand any nonsense."

He greeted me with a joy that I could not account for all at once in an
entire stranger, and it was mixed with a childlike and candid surprise. I
wondered what I had done that he should be so glad to see me.

His manner very soon left me in no doubt as to what I had done. I had
brought the most intense relief to the Captain's innocent mind. I do not
know by what subtle shades he managed to convey to me that, compared with
the queer chap I so easily might have been, he found me distinctly
agreeable. It was obvious that I existed for him only as the chap, the
strange and legendary chap, that Viola had taken up with, and that in
this capacity he, to his own amazement, approved of me. I gathered that,
knowing his sister, he had feared the worst, and that the blessed relief
of it was more than he could bear if he didn't let himself go a bit.

He had quite evidently come, o