Katrine folded the letter, replaced it in its envelope, and sat on the side of her bunk staring vacantly into space. For the first time the reading of a letter from Jim had left behind a feeling of disappointment and jar. He had struck a wrong note, and one which awoke in her a feeling of resentment. Surely now, when she was actually on her way, he should have hidden his doubts and affected an even stronger confidence and determination. She had looked forward to the receipt of this letter, expecting to be cheered, assured; now she could have found it in her heart to wish that it had not arrived! Jim Blair, depressed and doubtful, was an unfamiliar figure, with which she had no association. From the beginning of their correspondence it had been his assurance, this breezy self-confidence, amounting almost to audacity, which had captured her imagination; now when she needed it most that assurance had failed! Katrine laid herself down and made a pretence of sleep, which fatigue presently turned into reality. She was awakened by the ringing of the first dinner bell, and lengthened out the process of dressing by a bath, and an elaborate re-arrangement of hair. She also displayed an unusual self-abnegation in the matter of the mirror, so that when the last gong rang, her toilette was still incomplete, and Mrs Mannering sailed off alone, clasping jet bracelets round bony wrists. Even when she had the cabin to herself Katrine showed no anxiety to hurry. The plain truth was that she dreaded entering the saloon, and facing the meeting which lay ahead. Until that afternoon she had looked forward with eagerness to the arrival of Captain Bedford, whose society would disperse the feeling of loneliness which is never more acute than in the midst of a crowd. He was the Middletons' friend, Jim's friend; reported to be good, staid, steady-going; not too young, straight as a die, and a splendid soldier,--in short an elder-brother-sort-of-man, agreeably free from romance. They would meet, not as strangers, but with such a bond of common interests, such a certainty of future friendship, as would carry them in a bound past the initial stages of acquaintanceship. She had counted the hours until Port Said should be reached, and now! here she was sitting dawdling in her cabin, dreading to leave it, and face what lay ahead... Could that be Captain Bedford--that man with the tanned face, whose personality among a crowd of strangers had asserted itself with such magnetic force; whose eyes had held her own captive, against her struggling will? Surely it was but one chance to a hundred! There had been other men in that group, other men hanging about the hotel; tall, bronzed, soldier-like men by the dozen, any one of whom might even now be sitting in the place next to her own in the saloon, wondering, with a tepid curiosity, when Miss Beverley would appear!