“I’m glad you acknowledge the debt. You can’t get out of it. I saved your life and I’m waiting for you to say ‘Thank you.’”
If looks could have killed, I think he would have liked to kill me then. He pushed roughly past me. At the door he turned back, and spoke over his shoulder.
“I shall not thank you—now or at any other time. But I acknowledge the debt. Some day I will pay it.”
He was gone, leaving me with clenched hands, and my heart beating like a mill race.
CHAPTER XI
There were no further excitements that night. I had breakfast in bed and got up late the next morning. Mrs. Blair hailed me as I came on deck.
“Good-morning, Gipsy girl, sit down here by me. You look as though you hadn’t slept well.”
“Why do you call me that?” I asked, as I sat down obediently.
“Do you mind? It suits you somehow. I’ve called you that in my own mind from the beginning. It’s the gipsy element in you that makes you so different from any one else. I decided in my own mind that you and Colonel Race were the only two people on board who wouldn’t bore me to death to talk to.”
“That’s funny,” I said, “I thought the same about you—only it’s more understandable in your case. You’re—you’re such an exquisitely finished product.”