Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
Reine looked him in the face very sedately. I do not think that his
rudeness alarmed, or even annoyed her, to speak of. A gleam of malice
came into her eyes; then a gleam of something else, which was, though it
was hard to see it, a tear. Then she suddenly took his hand, kissed it
before Everard had time to stop her, and fled below. And when she
reached the safe refuge of the ladies’ cabin, where no profane foot
could follow her, Reine took off her hat, and shook down her hair, which
was all blown about by the wind, and laughed to herself. When she turned
her eyes to the dismal little swinging lamp overhead, that dolorous
light reflected itself in such glimmers of sunshine as it had never seen
before.
How gay the girl felt! and mischievous, like a kitten. Pay him! Reine
sat down on the darksome hair-cloth sofa in the corner, with wicked
smiles curling the corners of her mouth; and then she put her hands over
her face, and cried. The other ladies, poor souls! were asleep or
poorly, and paid no attention to all this pantomime. It was the happiest
moment she had had for years, and this is how she ran away from it; but
I don’t think that the running away made her enjoy it the less.
As for Everard, he was left on deck feeling somewhat discomfited. It was
the second time this had happened to him. She had kissed his hand
before, and he had been angry and ashamed, as it was natural a man
should be, of such an inappropriate homage. He had thought, to tell the
truth, that his demand for payment was rather an original way of making
a proposal; and he felt himself laughed at, which is, of all things in
the world, the thing most trying to a lover’s feelings. But after
awhile, when he had lighted and smoked a cigar, and fiercely
perambulated the deck for ten minutes, he calmed down, and began to
enter into the spirit of the situation. Such a response, if it was
intensely provoking, was not, after all, very discouraging. He went
downstairs after awhile (having, as the reader will perceive, his attack
of the love-sickness rather badly), and looked at Herbert, who was
extended on another dismal sofa, similar to the one on which Reine
indulged her malice, and spread a warm rug over him, and told him the
hour, and that “we’re getting on famously, old fellow!” with the utmost
sweetness. But he could not himself rest in the dreary cabin, under the
swinging lamp, and went back on deck, where there was something more
congenial in the fresh air, the waves running high, the clouds breaking
into dawn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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