The steamer in which our friends had embarked had reached the landlocked Baltic. The lingering northern twilight was slowly, reluctantly giving place to night, such night as northern latitudes know even in late summer, when a sort of delicate gray veil, through which every object is distinctly visible, shrouds the earth for a few hours between sunset and sunrise. These nights possess a poetical charm that almost defies description, a charm that touches the most unimaginative with a vague sense of the nearness of an intangible other-world. There is a darkening and a hush. Nature, weary with the long day, rests; but rests, as it were, awake, waiting for the quick-coming dawn. Helen, sitting a little apart from a merry group of fellow-passengers on the steamer's deck, was under the spell of this wonderful summer's night. There are certain phases in nature which seem to work upon highly-strung people until they experience a kind of spiritual quickening, some such quickening as we imagine may come to us after death. It was this influence that was upon Helen now. The day had passed pleasantly enough except for one incident. Mrs. Desmond had not found the voyage come up to her expectations. In crossing the North Sea she had been horribly sea-sick, and now, although scarcely a ripple disturbed the surface of the Baltic, she found it hard to forget her previous sufferings. Upon this day, however, she had ventured up on deck for the first time. Helen, noticing her stepmother shivering, had run unasked to fetch her a wrap. Heedlessly catching up the first she could find, a white fleecy shawl, she ran up the companion with it in her hand. Just as she reached the top a steward, carrying a plate of soup, passed her. How it came about Helen scarcely knew, but the ship lurched, and the contents of the plate were bestowed upon the delicate white shawl. Mrs. Desmond from her chair watched the scene, and gave a little cry of dismay as she saw the rich soup dyeing her favourite shawl.
Tears rushed to Helen's eyes.
"I am very sorry," she stammered, going forward slowly and hanging her head.
Inwardly Mrs. Desmond felt convinced that Helen had acted from first to last with the sole purpose of annoying her. A good many people, however, were sitting and standing near her, and she controlled her anger.
"Why did you fetch the shawl?" she asked coldly.
"I—I thought it would make you more comfortable."
There was a second's pause, during which Mrs. Desmond mentally decided that Helen was lying deliberately.
"Take the thing away, please," she said at last. "It is utterly ruined. The very sight of it makes me feel ill."
"What an unlucky little girl it is!" said Colonel Desmond, patting Helen's shoulder as she turned silently away.
"And what a pity to see such a lovely shawl ruined!" ejaculated a lady who was sitting next to Mrs. Desmond, and who thought that that lady had displayed remarkable forbearance.