“It is very kind of you to say that,” murmured Hilda Stretton, “but I think I have played enough for one morning.”
“At least finish the selection you were just now engaged upon,” I begged.
“Some other time, please,” she said in a low voice; and I did not urge her further, for I saw she was frightened.
“Very well,” I replied, “I shall take that as a promise.”
She inclined her head as she came down the room, and went up the stairs, disappearing also on deck, leaving me wondering what all this disquietude was about. I thought of going on deck myself, but, feeling slightly resentful at the treatment accorded me by Miss Hemster, I walked forward, sat down on the piano-stool, and began to drum a few of the catchy London tunes that ran through my head. I was playing “Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road” with little idea of how excellent an overture it would prove for the act about to be commenced, and was thinking of the Strand, and the Tivoli, and Chevalier, and Piccadilly Circus, and the Empire, and Leicester Square, and the Alhambra, when I was startled by a woman’s appealing voice crying just above a whisper:
“Oh, don’t, Gertie; please don’t!”
I turned my head and saw, coming down the stairway, Gertrude Hemster followed by Hilda Stretton. The latter was evidently almost on the verge of tears, but the face of the former was shocking to behold. I could not have believed that a countenance so beautiful was capable of being transformed into a visage that might have stood model for a picture of murderous wrath.
“Will you stop your foolish pounding on my piano?”