"Of course I am. I only wish I had an American girl with some fun in her next me at table instead of that Lady Clydesdale."
"Well! She is American enough, in all conscience, with her republican ideas! She seems to me plus royaliste que le roi, if one can use such a conservative figure of speech about her."
"Only the fun's wanting. She is in such deadly earnest, with her rights and her wrongs, and her emancipation from social slavery, and all the rest of it."
They had reached the saloon by this time; and most of the famished passengers were already seated. Opposite Sir Mordaunt Ballinger and his sister sat a couple concerning whom Grace felt a mild curiosity. It had not been sufficiently strong to prompt her to speak hitherto; and they were so quiet and retiring, it was pretty certain they would never take the initiative. Were they husband and wife? Hardly. The lady looked a little older than her companion. She had a sweet, tranquil face; and yet, for all its tranquillity, one read there the lines of suffering and sorrow. Her abundant brown hair was smoothly parted over a brow that was too large for beauty, without fringe or curl, to mitigate the defect in proportion. Her dress was of Puritanic simplicity. She wore no bracelet, or ornament of any description; but on her delicate small hand was a wedding-ring.
Her companion, without being ill-built, had the sort of figure which looks as if he had never been trained to athletics, and is unused to active exercise. His hands and feet were almost too small for his height. His chest was contracted; and he had a cough which, without being constant, made itself heard now and again. His smile was a very pleasant one, lighting up the entire face, as some smiles seem incapable of doing; and his rare laugh was merry as a boy's. He wore his clothes badly, and the clothes themselves were ill-made: facts which disqualified him in Sir Mordaunt Ballinger's estimation, but hardly affected his sister. What did affect her was the curiously intense, powerful young face which rose, beardless, above the loose-tied neck-cloth. It was too thin and colorless for manly beauty, though the lines were fine, and the eyes of extraordinary depth. His voice, like his companion's, was low, and, except by certain expressions and the pronunciation of certain words, it would not have been apparent that he was American.
On the lady's right sat Mr. Ruggs, from Chicago, who had been to Europe to enlist sympathy for the World's Fair, and who held forth to Lady Clydesdale, opposite him, as to the wonders of the show, "which I tell you, ma'am, will knock the Paris Exhibition into a cocked hat!" His opulence and prodigality of illustration seemed a little oppressive to the gentlewoman beside him. Her companion had Miss Lobb on his left. That highly cultured lady tackled him at once upon the subject of undeveloped cosmic forces. Grace asked herself whether he would not be as glad to escape from the cosmic forces as she would be to forego the rapid vehemence of the young man from New York. And so, resolved that the stream of white cloth should divide her no longer from her opposite neighbors, she startled them with this original observation, addressed indifferently to both:
"How hungry being at sea makes one!"
The lady responded with a fluttering smile, "I have not experienced it as yet. I hope my son will do so soon. He has been sick."
Her son? Grace was astonished. And sick? Why, the twenty-four hours that had passed since leaving Liverpool had been absolutely calm. In her expressive countenance the young man read possibly what was passing in her mind.
"You would say 'ill,'" he observed, with a smile. "We use the word in the old Scriptural sense."