"How strange that is! No wonder you laugh! However, I said nothing against him—quite the contrary—and that is always a comfort when we feel we have been putting our foot in it. I was wondering, Mrs. Cresswell, who you were. It seemed to me I had seen you on the street in Toronto."
He spoke very politely. No one could take any exception to this tone. Even when he made the following remark it did not seem very much more than the ordinary growth of a chance conversation among travelers. He added:
"Let me see—a? Your maiden name was—a?" He raised his eyebrows with would-be polite inquiry; but it did not work. He had looked keen for the tenth part of a second, and now he might as well go in and rest himself for the remainder of the night.
Nina drooped her eyelids coldly.
"I do not know that that is a matter of any consequence."
She gave a little movement, as if she drew herself to herself, and she leisurely returned the glasses to their case.
Mr. Dearborn saw he had got his congé, and he wanted to kill himself. He felt rather awkward, and could not think of the right thing to say. The writer of Happy Thoughts has not provided mankind with the best reply to a snub that comes "straight from the shoulder." Even a Chesterfield may be unequal to the occasion.
"I hope you will not think me inquisitive?" he said lamely.
"Not at all," said Nina quickly. She slightly inclined her head, without looking at him, as she moved away to her chair—not wishing to appear too abrupt.
She sat there wondering who this man was, and thinking she had been foolish to say anything about herself. The evening came on chill, windy, and foggy, and she grew strangely lonely. She had got the idea that this man was watching her. It made her very nervous and wretched. She longed for some strong friend to be with her—some one on whom she could rely. Everything had conspired to depress her in the past few weeks. She had now left her home and a kind father—never to return. She was out in the world, with no one to look to but Jack. This would be a long night for her, she thought. She was too nervous to go to sleep. She felt so tired of all the unrest of her life. What would she not give to have all her former chances back before her again! How she longed for the mental peace she had known until lately. Oh, the fool she had been! the wickedness of it all! How she had been forced from one thing to another by the consequences of her fault! She was terribly wretched, poor girl, as the evening wore on. She went to her cabin and undressed for bed. She said her prayers kneeling on the damp carpet. She prayed for Jack's safety and for her own, and for the man who assisted her to all her misery. Still her despair and forlornness weighed upon her more and more. The sense of being entirely alone, without any protection from a nameless fear, which the idea of being watched all day by an unknown man greatly increased; the terrible doubt about everything in the future—all this culminated in an absolute terror. She lay in bed and tried to pray again, and then an idea she acquired when a child came to her, that prayers were unavailing unless said while kneeling on the hard floor. In all her terror, the conviction of wickedness almost made her faint, and to make things worse, she got those awful words into her head, "the wages of sin is death," and she could not get them out. Yielding to the idea that her prayers would be better if said kneeling, she climbed out panic-stricken to the cold floor, which chilled her to the bone, and terrified by the words ringing in her head she almost shrieked aloud: