"They would be interesting," I suggested drily.
She looked at me. "My good friend, doctor, you are right," she said charmingly. "More interesting than this company. Monsieur 'Olgate, he is interesting, is it not?"
"We may have an opportunity of judging presently," said I lightly.
Mademoiselle got up and peered out of the port-holes. The glow of the electric light in the luxurious saloon threw into blueness the stark darkness of the evening. Nothing was visible, but through the ports streamed the cadences of the water rising and falling about the hull. It had its picturesque side, that scene, and looked at with sympathetic eyes the setting was romantic, whatever tragedy might follow. That it was to be tragedy I was assured, but this pretty, emotional butterfly had no such thoughts. Why should she have? She was safeguarded by the prince of a regnant line; she was to be the mistress of millions; and she could coquette at will in dark corners with handsome officers. She was bored, no doubt, and when dominoes with her maid failed her, she had Barraclough to fall back on, and there was her art behind all if she had only an audience. I began to see the explanation of that astonishing scene earlier in the day. She was vain to her finger-tips; she loved sensations; and it was trying even to be the betrothed of a royal prince if divorced from excitements to her vanity. After all, Prince Frederic, apart from his lineage, was an ordinary mortal, and his conversation was not stimulating. In Germany or in Paris Mademoiselle would have footed it happily as the consort even of a dethroned prince; but what was to be got out of the eternal wash and silence of the ocean, out of the sea, sea, sea, as she herself phrased it?
She came back from the port-hole. "It is so dull," she said, and yawned politely. Well, it was dull, but perhaps dulness was more pleasant than the excitements which we were promised. With a flirt of her eyes she left us.
When she was gone Barraclough eyed me coldly and steadily.
"You didn't say all you had to say," he remarked.
"No, I didn't. Lights or no lights, Holgate will attack presently—I will not pin myself to to-night. He is where he wants to be, or will be soon. Then he has no use for us"—I paused—"women or men."
"Good God, do you think him that sort of scoundrel?" he inquired sharply.
"What has he done? Played with us as a cat with mice. Oh, he's the most unholy ruffian I've ever struck. And you know it. Look at his face. No, Barraclough, it's death, it's death to every man jack."