If she had been less absorbed in the present scene, and had given one glance behind her, she would have seen that husband coming down the passage with measured tread. But her attention was fully concentrated on her companion, and his on her; and the man behind stopped short as a pink palm suddenly flew into the air and then descended mercilessly.
She was only a little thing, but she had plenty of courage, and was by no means afraid of the tall young man bending over her; and there were no half-way measures with her. She had slapped the aggressor in the face, and had done it so successfully that he was glad to let her go.
With a curious dash of sympathy in the scorn with which he regarded the tottering figure, Captain Fordyce moved toward him and laid a hand on his shoulder: “Never mind her,—get into your room.”
Adonis was about to follow her, to endeavour to seize the wicked palm and press it in punishment to his lips; but now he speedily changed his mind, and in a shuffling manner proceeded to fall in with the advice given.
Captain Fordyce went after him, said a few words in his ear, then he stepped outside.
Nina had paused away down there in the half-darkness, and was looking back. If her enemy had fallen, it would have been like her to return and give him assistance. But now he had safely disappeared, and there was her husband.
She did not like the expression of his face. How unfortunate that he should have come on the scene just now! He would think that she had been flirting with that miserable young man. Should she go back and explain? No, she was afraid of that black Spanish temper. She would wait until morning; and, wisely wagging her head, she scampered the rest of the way to her room with the guilty air of a wanderer returning home.
However, she loitered by the doorway and listened with ears in the air. Her husband had followed her for some distance. Now he was going up a near stairway and giving vent to his displeasure by that most common and convenient of all methods,—violently banging a door. She shivered, and with a pagan wish that some dire calamity might befall the young man who had been the cause of her mortification, she went to bed.
For some reason or other she could not sleep. There was a thorn in her pillow; and although she shook it vigorously, it would not be driven out; therefore in impatient, healthy restlessness she lay awake, her brain a jumble of thought, pierced occasionally by the clear, weird sound of the boatswain’s whistle as it blew at intervals through the long, long night.
At seven o’clock she got up, and, with a face “tinged with wan from lack of sleep,” looked out the window. The storm was over. She had scarcely noticed its subsidence during the night, but now she saw that they had come to a glorious day. The air was keen and cool, the eastern sky was adorned with crimson and gold streaks, the morning sun was flashing on the deep green waves, and another quotation from her school-books leaped into her mind.