No sooner had the foolish cry escaped her lips than she could have bitten out her tongue for vexation. A change came over Lady Gerardine’s face, colder and greyer than even the rapid tropic evening that was closing upon the scene. The light went out in her eyes, to be replaced by a distant contempt. The features that had quivered with passion became set into their wonted mask of repose; it was as if a veil had dropped between them, as if a cold wind drove them apart. "I was not speaking of your uncle," said Rosamond, at length, very gently. Then she suggested that as it was growing late they should take possession of their cabin. And Aspasia, as she meekly acquiesced, trembled upon tears at the thought of her blundering. For one moment this jealously centred heart had been about to open itself to her; for one moment this distant enfolded being had turned to her as woman to woman; impelled by God knows what sudden necessity of complaint, of another’s sympathy, of another’s understanding, the lonely soul had called upon hers. And she, Aspasia—Baby, well did they name her so—had not been able to seize the precious moment! The sound of her own foolish laugh still rang in her ears, while the unconscious contempt in Rosamond’s gaze scorched her cheeks. * * * * * From the very first day, fate, in the shape of an imperiously intimate Aspasia, drew Raymond Bethune, the saturnine lonely man, into the narrow circle of Lady Gerardine’s ’board-ship existence. In her double quality of great lady and semi-invalid, the Lieutenant-Governor’s wife was to be withdrawn from the familiar intercourse which life on a liner imposes on most travellers. It had been Sir Arthur’s care to see that she was provided with an almost royal accommodation, which, as everything in this world is comparative, chiefly consisted in the possession of a small sitting-room over and above the usual sleeping-cabin. Into these sacred precincts Miss Cuningham hustled Bethune unceremoniously, as the first dusk closed round their travelling home on the waste of waters. "Steward! ... Oh, isn’t it too bad, Major Bethune! I’ve been ringing like mad, and poor old Jani’s bewildered out of her wits; and Gibbons—that’s our English fool of a maid—she’s taken to groaning already. There’s not a creature to do anything for us, and that idiot there says he’s nothing to say to the cabins!"