She was just trying to decide whether his chin meant coolness of temper or extreme good nature, when she heard, in a dry tone, “A penny for your thoughts.”
She looked up and found that Captain Fordyce’s deep, dark-pupilled eyes were turned on her with an expression almost of displeasure.
“I have asked you twice for the walnuts,” he went on, “yet you dream away as if you were alone in a desert.”
“So I am alone in a dessert,” she said, mischievously, as she put the dish within his reach.
He shook his head at her, then applied himself to his nuts. Nina tried to be less absent-minded, but she took no part in the animated conversation kept up by the most of the passengers. She did not scrutinise any more of them. Their number bewildered her. She would attack the remainder to-morrow; and there was another wave of homesickness passing over her. She dropped the bunch of raisins she had just taken, threw down her napkin, and left the table.
While she was hurriedly trying to find her way to her room, she heard a step behind her, and a remark in her husband’s deep voice: “I am on my way to see the other young lady that I have in charge. She is ill already, but I think I can persuade her to spend the evening in the chart-room. I have some writing to do. Perhaps you will come and help me entertain her. It will be pleasanter for you than sitting alone or among all these strangers.”
“I—I don’t think I would do her any good,” stammered Nina, plaintively.
“What about misery and company?”
She reluctantly made a gesture of consent, and Captain Fordyce continued, “Let us go to ninety-three and get a wrap, so you may have a walk before going to bed.”
“I thought you didn’t like red,” observed Nina, coldly, when he stepped out of her room holding a brilliant-hued cloak.