“Do you take me for a Choctaw Indian, sir? I’ll say nothing at present. Board ship is no place for scenes. She’s very shaky still, though better.”
“Yes, I think she is a shade better now she is on deck all day.”
“It was an awful pity about the little boy, Wynne, and——”
Here the electric light suddenly went out, and Mr. West had to grope his way as best he could to his own cabin. He lay awake for hours, listening to the seas washing against the side of his berth, thinking—thinking of what he had been told that night, thinking of Madeline and Wynne in a new light, and thinking most of all of the little fair-haired grandchild that he had never seen.
CHAPTER XLIII.
HEARTS ARE TRUMPS.
The night of the conversation in the smoking-room, when Mr. West scrambled below in the dark—not knowing, as he subsequently explained it, whether he stood on his head or his heels—was the occasion of a curious incident in Miss West’s cabin. Each day as she grew stronger and better, recovering energy and appetite, Mrs. Leach became worse, and the weather to correspond. She sustained existence on Brand’s essence and champagne, and counted the hours until they were in the Mediterranean—not that even the tideless sea can be reckoned on in October. Mrs. Leach felt miserably ill, peevish, and envious; and when Madeline came down to go to bed, she asked her to get her a bottle out of her dressing-bag—“something to make her sleep.”
“Shall I hand the bag up to you?”
“No, no, it’s open. A long, greenish bottle—in the pocket next the blotter.”
Yes, the bag was not locked; the contents were in great confusion—combs, pins, handkerchiefs, note-paper. It was not so easy to discover the little green bottle. In turning out the loose articles, Madeline came upon a letter addressed, in Mrs. Kane’s scrawl, to “Miss West, care of Mrs. Harper, Streambridge,” forwarded to Belgrave Square, and from Belgrave Square to Brighton. Some one had kindly saved her the trouble of opening it, presumably the lady in the top berth and the owner of the bag.
“Well, have you not found it yet? Dear me, how slow you are!” she exclaimed fretfully.