Nina bridled, sat up a trifle straighter, and said, conventionally, although demurely: “Take into consideration the fact that a model wife has usually a model husband.”
“Right you are,” he said, idly tearing in pieces an envelope that he took from the table. Presently he looked up. “Have you been quite happy the last few days?”
“Quite happy, thank you.”
“You seem to have been having a lively time.”
“Very lively; Miss Marsden is charming.”
“And Mr. Maybury.”
“Mr. Maybury, too,” and she gave him a steely glance from the corner of her eye, that made his blood thrill in his veins. She was furious with him, but she was getting over her babyish habit of exploding into wrath on every available occasion. She had missed his devotion. So very warm the first part of the voyage, so very cold the latter. With the sensitiveness of her sex, she had resented the change in his conduct that had drawn upon her the comment of outsiders. Perhaps the captain was not, after all, so wrapped up in his pretty wife, the passengers would observe; and very likely they had been expressing their pity in some unostentatious way that she would be quick to notice and to resent, and that would make her more wrathy with him.
“Suppose I do not wish to visit the Forrests,” she was saying, in a hard voice. “Is there no other place for me?”
“Apart from me, you would say, birdie,” he remarked, gently. “Yes, you may board somewhere in Liverpool, or, if I get a chance, I will send you on to London.”
“Why could I not go with Miss Marsden?”