Then it occurred to him that Miss Stuyvesant had merely answered his questions, and as these had been restricted to quite impersonal topics, he only knew her name after all.
That she was good-looking, agreeable, and witty, he had already observed, but she did not seem to thrust any information about herself upon him, as he had supposed an American girl would. He did not see her again that day, nor till the next afternoon, when she was walking up and down the deck with the captain of the steamer, and as she passed him with a little nod of recognition he heard her speaking German.
“Surely American,” he thinks, “knows the captain already, and speaks his language.”
At dinner Mrs. Barry was missing, but Miss Stuyvesant appeared looking as calm and “well-groomed” as if a heavy sea were not tossing everything about, and obliging the passengers to eat over racks.
“You are an old sailor, I see,” began Mr. Gordon-Treherne, “but I fear Mrs. Barry is ill.”
“Yes, quite seriously ill,” Miss Stuyvesant replied. “It is always an ordeal for her to cross the ocean.”
“And has she done so frequently?” he asked.
“Nine times with me,” the young woman coolly replied.
“Really,” he said with a smile, “one might infer you had some designs on her life, did you not look so anxious about her.”
“Oh, no, we usually have some excellent reason, we do not take this voyage in order to martyrize Mrs. Barry,” she replied.