Mrs. Crawford was thoughtful. “If you had only had time to prepare for the voyage, and I had been beside you, everything might have been different. You must not wear anything pronounced—any distinct colour: you must find out something undecided—you understand?”
Daireen looked puzzled. “I'm sorry to say I don't.”
“Oh, you have surely something of pale sage—no, that is a bad tone for the first days aboard—too like the complexions of most of the passengers—but, chocolate-gray? ah, that should do: have you anything in that to do for a morning dress?”
Daireen was so extremely fortunate as to be possessed of a garment of the required tone, and her kind friend left her arraying herself in its folds.
On going aloft Daireen found the deck occupied by a select few of the passengers. The healthy gentleman was just increasing his pace for the final hundred yards of his morning's walk, and Doctor Campion had got very near the end of his second cheroot, while he sat talking to a fair-haired and bronze-visaged man with clear gray eyes that had such a way of looking at things as caused people to fancy he was making a mental calculation of the cubic measure of everything; and it was probably the recollection of their peculiarity that made people fancy, when these eyes looked into a human face, that the mind of the man was going through a similar calculation with reference to the human object: one could not avoid feeling that he had a number of formulas for calculating the intellectual value of people, and that when he looked at a person he was thinking which formula should be employed for arriving at a conclusion regarding that person's mental capacity.
Mrs. Crawford was chatting with the doctor and his companion, but on Daireen's appearing, she went over to her.
“Perfect, my child,” she said in a whisper—“the tone of the dress, I mean; it will work wonders.”
While Daireen was reflecting upon the possibility of a suspension of the laws of nature being the result of the appearance of the chocolate-toned dress, she was led towards the doctor, who immediately went through a fiction of rising from his seat as she approached; and one would really have fancied that he intended getting upon his feet, and was only restrained at the last moment by a remonstrance of the girl's. Daireen acknowledged his courtesy, though it was only imaginary, and she was conscious that his companion had really risen.
“You haven't made the acquaintance of Miss Gerald, Mr. Harwood?” said Mrs. Crawford.
“I have not had the honour,” said the man.