“May I give you some beef?” he went on, politely.
“No, thanks,” she said, briefly, “I wish some tongue,” and she glanced toward her right-hand neighbour, who immediately began to cut her thin slices.
Captain Fordyce frowned, and Nina, being quite well aware of it, wrinkled her own forehead in displeasure. He was the most jealous, tyrannical man ever created, and even the small matter of refusing to be served by him was sufficient to throw him in a temper. Yet there were sins worse than jealousy. Pray Heaven he was not guilty of them. Was he—could it be? What had Mr. Delessert meant by the few mysterious words he had spoken to her an hour previously? Her pretty face grew cold and hard as she calmly partook of a meal for which she had suddenly lost her appetite.
Captain Fordyce, reading her mind with his usual skill, though apparently he did not once look her way, was angry and uneasy. Some kind of an understanding existed between that tailor’s masterpiece and his shy New England wild flower. He saw it in the few words they addressed to each other, although the man was a model of reticent propriety, and the girl was cool and almost repellent in her remarks to him.
He listened to a question from the young man. “Are you going to venture on deck this afternoon?”
Nina politely but frigidly informed him that she did not know.
“The sea is not calm yet,” he observed, smoothly, “you had better have an escort.”
“Mrs. Fordyce is going up on the bridge with me,” observed the man at the head of the table, calmly surveying them both over his coffee-cup.
Nina remained severely non-committal until lunch was over, and her husband requested her to go and put on a warm jacket, and meet him by the large lamp outside the library.
Then she made a gesture of dissent. Her impulse was to do nothing of the kind. To be disposed of in this arbitrary fashion was irritating to the last degree, especially in view of the partial and exciting revelations made to her by the young man of fascinating manners. She had better shut herself up in her room for the rest of the day. But it was so small and so dreary, and these new thoughts would be so teasing. Perhaps she could force that delinquent ’Steban into some admissions if she were to skilfully question him. And the invariable presence of one of the officers on the bridge would keep him from annoying her with any lover-like nonsense; so with a sigh she relented, donned a heavy jacket, pulled a tight-fitting cap over her brown head, and obediently made her way in the direction of the big lamp.