"In this boat, in an ordinary sea, there'll be no excuse for it. Why, one hardly knows we are moving. To return to Clandonald, don't you think people one reads about and hears about are always disappointing? I don't say there was anything wrong attributed to him; they said he was rather Quixotic in his treatment of the worthless creature, who had to give up his name and go under. But he is so much like other people. Nothing to show he was in such a notorious divorce suit—Helen, what are you smiling at?"
"The thrilling thought that I had M. de Mariol to mix my salad dressing," replied Miss Carstairs.
"Was it good? I am always careful the first day out. Oh! I must tell you about those queer Dicks, the Southerners. It seems that Lord and Lady Channel Fleet came on board at the last minute, and took quite an ordinary room—that heavy-looking red-faced man and the dowdy woman in big turquoise earrings, who sat at the captain's table—they had to have those two seats, so the Winstanleys were transferred to us. If we had only secured the Channel Fleets, we should have been so complete! Perhaps they and Clandonald don't speak, though, and the captain found it out, or the purser, who always hears all the gossip. At any rate, we've got to put up with the Winstanleys, and I'll give you my frank opinion, Helen, that before this voyage is over we'll have cause to rue the day when we laid eyes on them. The old man is simply too absurd. Treats her as if she were a princess and he her courier. How you could stand his babbling in your ear, I can't imagine. But she! she! The worst specimen of the travelling American who makes one blush for one's country when abroad."
"One must own to her good looks," Helen interpolated bravely.
Miss Bleecker snorted.
"My dear, that is unworthy of you. A Twenty-third Street shop-girl would be ashamed to do her hair like that; and her frock—bought in stock, and fitted in half a day, probably. But even that doesn't count beside her phenomenal assurance and self-conceit. Fancy now, her addressing a remark to me, before I had spoken to her. I never heard such a string of words from a young person in my life, and to take it upon her to entertain the whole table! It really silenced me. One comfort is that everybody will put her down as I did, and sooner or later she'll be left severely to herself."
"I noticed that Lord Clandonald and M. de Mariol seemed much amused, and the others couldn't keep their eyes from her," said truthful Helen, who had her own cause for blank wonderment at the further development of John Glynn's acquaintances.
"Oh! that is the provoking part of men," answered Miss Bleecker, tossing her head; "give them a pretty face and a forward manner, and they'll pretend to be entertained. I'm very sorry, Helen, but if that girl doesn't take my hint and tone down a great deal, I shall be under the necessity of making a complaint about our seats. It isn't possible the line wouldn't wish to place your father's daughter at least respectably at table. These Winstanleys are, in my opinion, most suspicious people, and I have asked Mr. Vereker to make very particular inquiries and find out if I am not right. He says that when she came into the saloon, every neck on our side was stretched looking after her, and he quite agrees with me—no, Mrs. Vereker agreed with me, her husband was weak enough to say what were the odds when a girl is so deuced pretty—that there must be something wrong."
The latter part of Miss Bleecker's monologue was spoken to space, since Miss Carstairs, melting away into her own room, had closed the door between them.
Helen found Mlle. Eulalie sitting on the foot of the cane settee, comfortably warming her toes at a small apparatus of shining brass, which, with its red lamp inside, presented a fair semblance of the forsaken fires of home. Upon the bed lay her own satin quilt, her own pillows of embroidered linen were prepared invitingly, her peignoir billowed across the couch. Upon every side gleamed and glittered the little objects of cut-glass, tortoise-shell and gold which she had heaped in the balance against John Glynn's love, along with a hundred other manifestations of the outward and visible signs of a solvent existence. To-night she was strangely repelled by them. She made a motion to go out again into the half darkness of that same deserted lower deck, where she could walk to the rush of the wind and the inspiriting swish of the water. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts, to bid a last good-by to the love she had known for a little happy while. Then the image of Miss Posey Winstanley, with her assured smile and undaunted self-satisfaction, came to her with a new shock, and, turning back, she let Eulalie take off her dress and brush her hair, surrendering herself inertly to the warmth and perfume of materialism, and trying to think she was better so.