Mrs. Thorne ran through all this in her accustomed little tired, inconsequential way of talking, winding up, finally, with a long and earnest yawn. She then danced up to a strip of mirror at the best lighted end of the cabin and settled herself to the contemplation of her own image with interest. She dabbed her cheeks first with rice powder, then with eau-de-cologne, then with powder again, producing these cosmetics without a show of disguise from a tiny gilt case that hung at her waist-belt. She arranged the folds of her cachemire scarf above her sleek head in a certain Gitana mode, which, like all good art, gave an idea of unpremeditation, and became her mightily; she pinned a knot of feathery grass, a memento, doubtless, of the starlit dunes, in her breast. Easy to predict that Linda Thorne would not be sea-sick to-night! She was warming to the situation, intended to work up her part--everything in human life was a part to Linda Thorne--with spirit. ‘Come up on deck, Mrs. Arbuthnot, will you not? Surely, with your splendid sea-going qualities, you are not going to stop down in this Black Hole of Calcutta?’ ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot will come up when I do,’ cried Cassandra, who, with an added pair of spectacles on her nose, was pinning out insects under a lamp. ‘Go your ways, Linda Thorne, wise ones if you can, and leave Mrs. Arbuthnot and me to follow ours.’ ‘I would not be wise if I might,’ said Linda, giving an expressive backward glance across her shoulder. ‘If I were wise ... I should see myself as other people see me.’ And having uttered this, the acutest speech that ever left her lips, away floated Mrs. Thorne, with her powdered cheeks, her cachemires, and her Indian fragrance, from the cabin. Dinah could hear the languid accents, the little stage laugh (learnt from the stalls), for a good many seconds later. She could distinguish the voices, too, of Gaston, and of Rosie Verschoyle. How heart-whole they all seemed. How frequent was their laughter! What a light time the past hours had been to every one of the party but herself! Gaston’s philosophy, thought Dinah, taking an unconscious downward step, might be the true one after all, then. Live while we live! What had she profited by a strain of feeling too tall for the occasion, by the tiptoe attitude, by throwing away gold where a more reasonable member of society would have quietly staked counters? ‘Any admittance here?’ exclaimed a masculine voice, as an impatient hand pushed back the cabin door. ‘Why, Mrs. Arbuthnot, I have been searching for you everywhere. I want you to come up on deck at once, please, and see a comet. Not a comet really, you know,’ Lord Rex went on, looking hard at Dinah’s white face. ‘Some kind of Japanese fire balloon sent up by the French people. However, it does just as well as one.’