And she takes not either. That round of vingt-un is never to be played—at least not with her as one of the players.
Still half distraught with the agony through which her soul has passed—the traces of which she fancies must be observable on her face—before making appearance in the brilliantly-lighted saloon, she passes around the corner of the ladies’ cabin, intending to enter her own state-room by the outside door.
It is but to spend a moment before her mirror, there to arrange her dress, the plaiting of her hair—perhaps the expression of her face—all things that to men may appear trivial, but to women important—even in the hour of sadness and despair. No blame to them for this. It is but an instinct—the primary care of their lives—the secret spring of their power.
In repairing to her toilette, Helen Armstrong is but following the example of her sex.
She does not follow it far—not even so far as to get to her looking-glass, or even inside her state-room. Before entering it, she makes stop by the door, and tarries with face turned towards the river’s bank.
The boat, tacking across stream, has sheered close in shore; so close that the tall forest trees shadow her track—the tips of their branches almost touching the hurricane-deck. They are cypresses, festooned with grey-beard moss, that hangs down like the drapery of a death-bed. She sees one blighted, stretching forth bare limbs, blanched white by the weather, desiccated and jointed like the arms of a skeleton.
’Tis a ghostly sight, and causes her weird thoughts, as under the clear moonbeams the steamer sweeps past the place.
It is a relief to her, when the boat, gliding on, gets back into darkness.
Only momentary; for there under the shadow of the cypresses, lit up by the flash of the fire-flies, she sees, or fancies it, a face! It is that of a man—him latest in her thoughts—Charles Clancy!
It is among the trees high up, on a level with the hurricane-deck.