And thus it was Adrian Ducie,--Randal’s brother--who had saved the child, shut up in the overturned stateroom like a rat in a trap. She knew, too, how lightly Floyd-Rosney would treat this if it were brought to his knowledge--he would say that not a drop of water had touched the child; he had sustained not an instant’s hurt. That he and his nurse had for a few moments been unable to turn the bolt of a door was only a slight inconvenience, as the result of a hurricane. One of the passengers had a badly bruised arm, on which a chandelier had fallen, another was somewhat severely cut about the head and face by the shattering of a mirror. The baby was particularly safe in the restricted little stateroom, where naught more deadly fell upon him than a pillow. But it mattered not now to her what Floyd-Rosney said or thought. All dwindled into insignificance, was nullified by the fact of the covert blow, on the sly,--how she scorned him--that these men might not see and despise him for it!--dealt in the folds of the child’s cloak, their child, his and hers! She wondered that he dared, knowing how she had surrendered him to scorn in their earlier difference. Perhaps he knew, and, indeed, she was sure, instinctively, that none would believe; the blow would be considered unintentional, the incident of the struggle to wrest the child from her grasp. If a moment ago she had seemed pale, haggard, a flaccid presentment of an ordinary type, that aspect had fallen from her like a mask. Her cheeks burned, and their intense carmine gave an emphasis to the luster and tint of her redundant yellow hair. Her eyes were alert, brilliant, not gray, nor brown, nor green, yet of a tint allied to each, and were of such a clarity that one could say such eyes might well gaze unabashed upon the sun. All her wonted distinction of manner had returned to her unwittingly, with the resumption of her normal identity, the reassertion of her courage. The necessity to endure had made her brave, quick to respond to the exigencies of the moment. As the child’s voice came to her through the torrents in a plaintive bleat of reluctance and terror, full of the pain and fear of parting from her, who was his little Providence, omnipotent, all-caring, infinitely loving, she nerved herself to call out gaily to him and wave her hand, and exhort him in the homely phrase familiar to all infancy, “to be a good boy.” The tears started to her eyes as she noted his sudden relapse into silence, and saw, through the rain, how humbly and acquiescently he lent himself to the bestowal of his small anatomy in the corner deemed fit by the imperious paternal authority.