"'If you will take my advice, my dear, you will go downstairs. I am an old man, and take the liberty of addressing you.'
"Fancy calling me 'my dear,' as though I were a child! I stood up and faced him.
"'My good sir, will you leave me alone?'
"He looked at me as though he were trying to find an excuse to begin a conversation. I daresay he would have liked me to make a confidant of him.
"'I am afraid you are in trouble. I don't like to see a young lady crying alone on deck all night, especially such a young lady as you.'
"I looked at him--you know how I can look if I like--and I walked away. I walked up and down the deck, and each time I passed him I looked him full in the face--such a look! He crossed to the other side. The scent of battle was in my nostrils. I crossed too. Then he went downstairs instead of me.
"Dear mamma, I stayed on deck all night. I saw the night gradually brighten. I saw the sun rise. I saw the birth of day. And, dear mamma, you have no idea how cold it was. You remember how cold it was when we saw the sun rise on the Righi? I declare I felt it quite as cold that morning on the boat. It was bitter. I was chilled to the bone. I went downstairs and routed out the steward, and made him get me a cup of coffee. I never enjoyed anything so much. And the state I was in when I looked at the glass! I went to the ladies' cabin and put myself to rights. And there I stayed. It was not nice. But I felt that it would be still less nice to have to return to the deck and meet a crowd of men and encounter Mr. Pearson. I had quite made up my mind what I would do. I resolved that when I reached Antwerp I would first of all wire to you, then go straight to Brussels, and return by the shorter route to England. I would do it if I only had enough money to take me the whole of the way third class. If Conrad wanted me he would find me where he found me first of all--at home. My home, not his.
"I was aware, from the motion of the ship, that we had entered the Scheldt. For some time we proceeded up the river. Then, all at once, we stopped. I supposed the stoppage to be for the purpose of taking up a pilot. After a delay the boat went on again. I was thinking about all sorts of things, and was telling myself that, perhaps, after all, I had not been so good a girl as I might have been, and that sometimes I had been to blame in those little flirtations which had chequered my career--and I wonder who would not have been sentimental in such a plight as mine--when someone came to the cabin door and said:
"'Is there anyone here of the name of Godwin?'
"I sprang up, my heart in my mouth.