"My dear Lord Orrel," replied Adelaide, with a radiant smile, "pray say nothing more; the arrangement will suit my aunt and myself perfectly—and, after all, we are at your service. It is you who are accommodating us. For my part, I think it is always pleasant the first night at sea, especially in summer. One wakes up the next morning to find the sun shining, and the water dancing, and the strong salt breeze ready to give one a most glorious appetite for breakfast. What more would you? The packing, as you call it, is done. For us it is only a question of putting our hats on and going on board—and, voila, c'est fait."
She said this with such a delightful air of insouciance, and with such a radiant smile, that Miss Chrysie felt that she could have shot her there and then. Under the circumstances, she just finished her coffee and said:
"Well, Olive, if that's so, I reckon we'd better go and get fixed up too. I quite agree with the marquise that it's better to start out at night on a voyage and wake up nice and fresh next morning, especially if you don't eat too liberal a dinner before you start."
"Oh yes," said Lady Olive; "I can be quite ready by this afternoon if you can, and if it's anything like the lovely moonlight night it was last night, we shall have a perfectly delicious run through the Solent and past the Needles."
"And along the coast," added Hardress; "the moonlight will last us a bit farther than that. We shall be well away to Portland before you want to go to bed I expect. The Nadine's got to do her best this time, and we've coaled up for a run across the Atlantic at twenty knots. That will be somewhat of an experience for you, marquise, will it not?"
"Yes, viscount," she said, with one of those smiles which Miss Chrysie hated so; "it is a very wonderful speed that, and of course it will be an experience."
"Then that's settled," said Lady Olive, rising, "we shall start this evening. Now let us go and pack."
The Nadine, spick and span, and clean as a new pin, was lying alongside the ocean quay at Southampton, her bunkers and half her hold crammed with the finest steaming coal that money could buy, and the steam whistling softly in her pipes.
Her second engineer, an exceedingly clever young fellow of twenty-five, whose good-looking face was marred by a pair of too-closely-set greenish-blue eyes, was leaning on the rail a little forward of the foremast, smoking a pipe and gazing down the water with eyes that saw nothing material. Edward Williams was as good a marine engineer as ever went afloat, but unfortunately he was possessed by the idea, too common among his class, that he possessed a creative and inventive genius as well as real cleverness in his profession.
He had invented what he considered to be improvement after improvement in marine machinery, and Lord Orrel had at first helped him generously to put them into practical form; but as he did not possess the genius, he believed he had, they had one after another failed to stand the test of practice, and at length both Lord Orrel and his son had closed their pockets and given him to understand that he had better devote himself to his profession and leave inventing alone. This produced the usual effect on such a mind as his. He forgot all that they had done for him, and looked upon them as wealthy men whose selfishness deliberately barred his way to the fame and fortune which ought to be his.