The words, sharp and decisive, cut like a knife, and, starting to my feet in amazement, I saw that Gertrude Hemster stood before us, her brow a thundercloud. Turning from her beautiful but forbidding countenance to see the effect of her peremptory sentence upon my dear companion, I found the chair empty, and the space around me vacant as if she had vanished into invisibility through the malign incantation of a sorceress.
CHAPTER XVII
“Will you be seated, Miss Hemster?” I said with such calmness as I could bring to my command.
“No, I won’t,” she snapped, like the click of a rifle.
I don’t know why it is that this girl always called forth hitherto unsuspected discourtesy which I regret to admit seems to lie very deep in my nature. I was bitterly angry at her rude dismissal of Hilda Stretton.
“Oh, very well; stand then!” I retorted with inexcusable lack of chivalry, and, that my culpability should be complete, immediately slammed myself emphatically down into the chair from which I had just risen. As I came down with a thump that made the wicker chair groan in protest, the look the lady bestowed upon me must have resembled that of the Medusa which turned people into stone.
“Well, you are polite, I must say,” she exclaimed, with a malicious swish of her skirts as she walked to and fro before me.
“You so monopolize all politeness on board this yacht,” was my unmannerly rejoinder, “that there is none of it left for the rest of us.”