stiny
took her again across the sea, and that if destiny never did take her again
across the sea never again would she show herself in the vestments, whose
correctness was only equalled by their expensiveness.

The young woman, however, took no thought of her impressive clothes. She
was existing upon quite another plane. Miss Ingate, preoccupied by the
wrongs and perils of her sex, and momentarily softened out of her sardonic
irony, suspected that they might be in the presence of a victim of
oppression or neglect. The victim lay Half-prone upon the hard wooden seat
against the ship's rail. Her dark eyes opened piteously at times, and her
exquisite profile, surmounted by the priceless hat all askew, made a
silhouette now against the sea and now against the distant white cliffs of
Albion, according to the fearful heaving of the ship. Spray occasionally
dashed over her. She heeded it not. A few feet farther off she would have
been sheltered by a weather-awning, but, clinging fiercely to the rail, she
would not move.

Then a sharp squall of rain broke, but she entirely ignored the rain.

The next moment Miss Ingate and Audrey, rushing forth, had gently seized
her and drawn her into their cabin. They might have succoured other martyrs
to the modern passion for moving about, for there were many; but they chose
this particular martyr because she was so wondrously dressed, and also
perhaps a little because she was so young. As she lay on the cabin sofa she
looked still younger; she looked a child. Yet when Miss Ingate removed her
gloves in order to rub those chill, fragile, and miraculously manicured
hands, a wedding ring was revealed. The wedding ring rendered her intensely
romantic in the eyes of Audrey and Miss Ingate, who both thought, in
private:

"She must be the wife of one of those lords!"

Every detail of her raiment, as she was put at her ease, showed her to be
clothed in precisely the manner which Audrey and Miss Ingate thought
peeresses always were clothed. Hence, being English, they mingled respect
with their solacing pity. Nevertheless, their respect was tempered by a
peculiar pride, for both of them, in taking lemonade on the Pullman, had
taken therewith a certain preventive or remedy which made them loftily
indifferent to the heaving of ships and the eccentricities of the sea. The
specific had done all that was claimed for it--which was a great deal--so
much so that they felt themselves superwomen among a ca