"Thank you. I'm sorry you are not resting well," said Posey, still under the influence of her recent gentle mood. "Is it anything you've eaten, do you think?"
"Eaten? I never eat at sea," sniffed the sufferer. "It's my nerves, as usual, and since you've roused me up completely, I'll thank you to mix me another trional powder, and not to turn up the light. While you're about it, you may's well step outside and get my rug off the rail, and put it over my poor feet. Blocks of ice they are, cold feet are constitutional in our family. Humph! Single fold, not double, I don't want to smother. I should think your father'd know better than to let a girl like you go traipsing around a ship alone at this hour of the night. Perhaps, if you'd heard what I did, since I've been lying here trying to count sheep and say the ten table, you'd haul in your horns a bit, and not think yourself such a museum wonder. The people in the next room were talking about you, and I heard the man say as plain as anything: 'If I wanted my daughter to keep her good name, I'd not let her go out on deck at night with that gay old bird, Tom Vereker.' And the woman answered: 'Some people's heads are so turned with vanity and fine company, they don't take ordinary care. It's the talk of all the decks how she's laying herself out to catch that disreputable lord, and he and his French friend calling her "dead easy sport," in the smoking-room.'"
"Did any one say that such words had been actually used about me by either of those gentlemen?" asked Posey, stopping short, her eyes blazing in the dark.
"How do I know all that's said, lying here a wretched victim of nerves, and nobody caring if I live or die?"
"I ask you, only, was it stated that either of those gentlemen said anything approaching to those words of me?"
"For goodness' sake, speak lower, Miss Winstanley, you'll be overheard. Some people have no consideration for others, especially girls at night, when people are trying to fall asleep. If there's a race I consider utterly heartless, it is girls."
"I am not going to let you sleep or rest," went on the avenger, calmly taking off her hat, "till you answer my question in plain words—yes or no."
"N-o-o. I don't know that it was actually said, but the lady inferred that Lord Clandonald and his friend couldn't think anything else, if you continued to give yourself away, as you've been doing."
"Very well! I understand. And, since we are due at Queenstown day after to-morrow, I shall ask you to oblige me by not addressing to me a syllable, good, bad or indifferent, so long as I have the misfortune to remain your room-mate. If we collide with something, and go down, don't even inquire of me where the life-preservers are. And now, since I want to read my note, I mean to turn on the electricity and do so comfortably, and you may wake or sleep, or go on inventing spiteful fables, whichever you prefer. From this moment, I am done with you."
Certainly, Posey knew how to take care of herself. But there was always a swift following of regret and penitence when she had let her clever tongue loose upon an opponent, and while the subdued spinster sobbed under her bedclothes, the girl rather miserably opened one of the ship's envelopes, to find, written upon a slip of paper, in an angular and illegible, but educated, woman's hand these words: