“That was precisely what I thought, only a good deal harder, when I was sat down to dinner, the second day out, and glanced across the table. You remember my telling you about my first experiences in America, when I was a shrinking and pink-cheeked young English governess, and never knew a bold thought or a dishonest act? Do you remember my describing the woman—it’s always a woman who is hard on another woman!—who accused me of—of having designs on her husband? Her husband, a miserable, oily little Hebrew diamond-merchant who twice insulted me on the stairs of his own house, when I had to swallow it without a word! Well, it was that woman who sat across the table from me. They had put me at the Captain’s table—my London gown, you see, looks uncommonly well. But there was that woman, a little more faded and wizened and wrinkled, looking at me with those beady old hawk eyes of hers; and I knew there was trouble ahead. “A war-correspondent, who had been nice to me, had brought up about everybody at our table worth while, and introduced them to me, that night before going down. So, when I saw that yellow face and those hawk eyes, I knew I had to think hard and fast.” “‘Are you not the young woman,’ she said, in a sort of _frappé_ of nasal indignation, ‘are you not the young woman whom I once employed as a governess and discharged for misconducting herself with—er—with the other servants?’ “I was so busy trying to be cool that I didn’t bother thinking out an answer. I did want to say, though, that it was not a servant, but her own devoted and anointed husband. I kept on talking to the Captain, deciding to ignore her icily. But that yellow hag deliberately repeated her question, and I heard the war-correspondent gasp out an indignant ‘My God, madam!’ and saw the Captain’s face growing redder and redder. So I went on and asked the Captain if intoxication was becoming commoner on the high seas. Then she began to splutter and tremble. I kept looking at her as languidly as ever, and a steward had to help her away. “But she knew that she was right. And she knew that I knew she knew. Though I had all the men on my side, and the Captain cheerfully saw to it that she was moved down to the tail end of the Doctor’s table, among the commercial travellers and the school-ma’ms, I knew well enough that she was only waiting for her chance.