Pauline stopped turning her rings—she rose slowly, mechanically, looked straight at Gladys.
"That is not true," she said calmly.
Gladys laughed sardonically. "You don't know the cold and haughty Governor Scarborough. There's fire under the ice. I can feel the places on my face where it scorched. Can't you see them?"
Pauline gave her a look of disgust. "How like John Dumont's sister!" she thought. And she shut herself in her room and stayed there, pleading illness in excuse, until Gladys was gone.
XXIII.
A SEA SURPRISE.
On the third day from New York, Gladys was so far recovered from seasickness that she dragged herself to the deck. The water was fairly smooth, but a sticky, foggy rain was falling. A deck-steward put her steamer-chair in a sheltered corner. Her maid and a stewardess swathed her in capes and rugs; she closed her eyes and said: "Now leave me, please, and don't come near me till I send for you."
She slept an hour. When she awoke she felt better. Some one had drawn a chair beside hers and was seated there—a man, for she caught the faint odor of a pipe, though the wind was the other way. She turned her head. It was Langdon, whom she had not seen since she went below a few hours after Sandy Hook disappeared. Indeed, she had almost forgotten that he was on board and that her brother had asked him to look after her. He was staring at her in an absent-minded way, his wonted expression of satire and lazy good-humor fainter than usual. In fact, his face was almost serious.
"That pipe," she grumbled. "Please do put it away."