At breakfast Mrs. Milray would not meet Clementina's eye; she talked to
the people across the table in a loud, lively voice, and then suddenly
rose, and swept past her out of the saloon.
The girl did not see her again till Mrs. Milray came up on the promenade
at the hour when people who have eaten too much breakfast begin to spoil
their appetite for luncheon with the tea and bouillon of the
deck-stewards. She looked fiercely about, and saw Clementina seated in
her usual place, but with Lord Lioncourt in her own chair next her
husband, and Ewins on foot before her. They were both talking to
Clementina, whom Lord Lioncourt was accusing of being in low spirits
unworthy of her last night's triumphs. He jumped up, and offered his
place, "I've got your chair, Mrs. Milray."
"Oh, no," she said, coldly, "I was just coming to look after Mr. Milray.
But I see he's in good hands."
She turned away, as if to make the round of the deck, and Ewins hurried
after her. He came back directly, and said that Mrs. Milray had gone into
the library to write letters. He stayed, uneasily, trying to talk, but
with the air of a man who has been snubbed, and has not got back his
composure.
Lord Lioncourt talked on until he had used up the incidents of the night
before, and the probabilities of their getting into Queenstown before
morning; then he and Mr. Ewins went to the smoking-room together, and
Clementina was left alone with Milray.
"Clementina," he said, gently, "I don't see everything; but isn't there
some trouble between you and Mrs. Milray?"
"Why, I don't know what it can be," answered the girl, with trembling
lips. "I've been trying to find out, and I can't undastand it."
"Ah, those things are often very obscure," said Milray, with a patient
smile.
Clementina wanted to ask him if Mrs. Milray had said anything to him
about her, but she could not, and he did not speak again till he heard
her stir in rising from her chair. Then he said, "I haven't forgotten
that letter to my sister, Clementina. I will give it to you before we
leave the steamer. Are you going to stay in Liverpool, over night, or
shall you go up to London at once?"
"I don't know. It will depend upon how Mrs. Landa feels."
"Well, we shall see each other again. Don't be worried." He looked up at
her with a smile, and he could not see how forlornly she returned it.
As the day passed, Mrs. Milray's angry eyes seemed to search her out for
scorn whenever Clementina found herself the centre of her last night's
celebrity. Many people came up and spoke to her, at first with a certain
expectation of knowingness in her, which her simplicity baffled. Then
they either dropped her, and went away, or stayed and tried to make
friends with her because of this; an elderly English clergyman and his
wife were at first compassionately anxious about her, and then
affectionately attentive to her in her obvious isolation. Clementina's
simple-hearted response to their advances appeared to win while it
puzzled them; and they seemed trying to divine her in the strange double
character she wore to their more single civilization. The theatrical
people thought none the worse of her for her simple-heartedness,
apparently; they were both very sweet to her, and wanted her to promise
to come and see them in their little box in St. John's Wood. Once,
indeed, Clementina thought she saw relenting in Mrs. Milray's glance, but
it hardened again as Lord Lioncourt and Mr. Ewins came up to her, and
began to talk with her. She could not go to her chair beside Milray, for
his wife was now keeping guard of him on the other side with unexampled
devotion. Lord Lioncourt asked her to walk with him and she consented.
She thought that Mr. Ewins would go and sit by Mrs. Milray, of course,
but when she came round in her tour of the ship, Mrs. Milray was sitting
alone beside her husband.
After dinner she went to the library and got a book, but she could not
read there; every chair was taken by people writing letters to send back
from Queenstown in the morning; and she strayed into the ladies' sitting
room, where no ladies seemed ever to sit, and lost herself in a miserable
muse over her open page.
Some one looked in at the door, and then advanced within and came
straight to Clementina; she knew without looking up that it was Mrs.
Milray. "I have been hunting for you, Miss Claxon," she said, in a voice
frostily fierce, and with a bearing furiously formal. "I have a letter to
Miss Milray that my busband wished me to write for you, and give you with
his compliments."
"Thank you," said Clementina. She rose mechanically to her feet, and at
the same time Mrs. Milray sat down.
"You will find Miss Milray," she continued, with the same glacial
hauteur, "a very agreeable and cultivated lady."
Clementina said nothing; and Mrs. Milray added,
"And I hope she may have the happiness of being more useful to you than I
have."
"What do you mean, Mrs. Milray?" Clementina asked with unexpected spirit
and courage.
"I mean simply this, that I have not succeeded in putting you on your
guard against your love of admiration--especially the admiration of
gentlemen. A young girl can't be too careful how she accepts the
attentions of gentlemen, and if she seems to invite them--"
"Mrs. Milray!" cried Clementina. "How can you say such a thing to me?"
"How? I shall have to be plain with you, I see. Perhaps I have not
considered that, after all, you know nothing about life and are not to
blame for things that a person born and bred in the world would
understand from childhood. If you don't know already, I can tell you that
the way you have behaved with Lord Lioncourt during the last two or three
days, and the way you showed your pleasure the other night in his
ridiculous flatteries of you, was enough to make you the talk of the
whole steamer. I advise you for your own sake to take my warning in time.
You are very young, and inexperienced and ignorant, but that will not
save you in the eyes of the world if you keep on." Mrs. Milray rose. "And
now I will leave you to think of what I have said. Here is the letter for
Miss Milray--"