At this there was a general pricking up of ears, and a faint glimmer of a smile illumined all faces but Captain Fordyce’s.
“Send her away,” he said, shortly.
Merdyce swung open the door, but Nina was an adept at dodging, and, by no means averse to playing a trick, glided by him and brought herself to a standstill some distance from the table. Between the dirty fringes dangling over her forehead, she contemplated herself in the mirror set in the wall behind her husband’s back.
What a guy she was,—enveloped from head to foot in a soiled linen carriage wrap. And yet the garment was a costly one, for not until she had placed three sovereigns in the hand of the cab-driver who conveyed her to the dock was she allowed to become possessor of it. He knew—the grasping fellow—that she could not go out on the river in an evening dress.
If she were in her usual spirits, and possessed of her usual propensity for seeking amusement at unlawful times and from unlawful sources, she would be in a convulsion of delight at the scene before her. Her husband could not see her face, nor her figure; and, thanks to the wrap, she could carry on an uninterrupted scrutiny of him.
He did not know her—how delicious! He sat back, joining in the universal stare (for the men had all stopped eating, and those who had had their backs toward her had twisted around on their seats), unutterably disgusted with the young person who had presumed to “spy” at him.
His keen eyes could not pierce the coarse, soiled fabric that enwrapped her, yet she saw he had fully made up his mind that inside it was not a lady, but a creature entirely vulgar and depraved.
He asked a leading question. “Who are you?”
She drew the fringes of the wrap across her mouth, and said, almost unintelligibly, “A poor girl!”
“What do you want?”