All that was sauciest, and most coquettish in the girl's nature, came out with Charley. With Sir Victor, as Trixy explained it, she was "goody" and talked sense.
Mr. Stuart went back to the ball, and, I regret to say, made himself obnoxious to old Featherbrain, by the marked empressement of his devotion to old Featherbrain's wife. Edith listened to the narration next day from the lips of Trix with surprise and disgust. Miss Stuart, on her own account, was full of triumph and happiness. Sir Victor had been most devoted, "most devoted" said Trix, in italics, "that is, for him. He danced with me very often, and he spoke several times of you, Dithy, dear. He couldn't understand why you absented yourself from the last party of the season—no more can I for that matter. A person may hate a person like poison—I often do myself—and yet go to that person's parties."
But this was a society maxim Miss Darrell could by no means be brought to understand. Where she liked she liked, where she hated she hated—there were no half measures for her.
The last day came. At noon, with a brilliant May sun shining, the ship fired her farewell guns, and steamed away for Merrie England. Edith leaned over the bulwark and watched the receding shore, with her heart in her eyes.
"Good-by to home," she said, a smile on her lip, a tear in her eye. "Who knows when and how I may see it again. Who knows whether I shall ever see it?"
The luncheon bell rang; everybody—a wonderful crowd too—flocked merrily downstairs to the saloon, where two long tables, bright with crystal and flowers, were spread. What a delightful thing was an ocean voyage, and sea-sickness—bah!—merely an illusion of the senses.
After lunch, Charley selected the sunniest spot on deck for his resting-place, and the prettiest girl on board, for his companion, spread out his railway rug at her feet, spread out himself thereon, and prepared to be happy and be made love to. Trix, on the arm of the baronet, paraded the deck, Mrs. Stuart and Lady Helena buried themselves in the seclusion of the ladies' cabin, in expectation of the wrath to come. Edith got a camp-stool and a book, and hid herself behind the wheel-house for a little of private enjoyment. But she did not read; it was delight enough to sit and watch the old ocean smiling, and smiling like any other coquette, as though it could never be cruel.
The afternoon wore on; the sun dropped low, the wind arose—so did the sea. And presently—staggering blindly on Sir Victor's arm, pale as death, with speechless agony imprinted on every feature—Trixy made her appearance behind the wheel house.
"O Edith, I feel awfully—awfully! I feel like death—I feel—"
She wrenched her arm from the baronet's, rushed wildly to the side, and—Edith's dark, laughing eyes looked up into the blue ones, that no effort of Sir Victor's could quite control. The next moment she was by Trixy's side, leading that limp and pallid heroine to the regions below, whence, for five mortal days, she emerged not, nor did the eye of man rest on Miss Beatrix Stuart.