the steward. "Cabin-ticket, ma'am? Cabin No. 9. Show the
lady to cabin No. 9."

Cabin No. 9 had heard these volubilities with sympathy, and a little
secret amusement impossible to avoid if one were ever so little
humorous, and lingered a moment while her maid went on to the cabin
followed by a porter carrying small luggage.

"But I demand a cabin," continued this deeply-wronged lady. "C'est mon
droit, si je la demande. Where is the capitan? Fetch him to me. Bring
him. Oh, mon Dieu, the deck--to be seeck on the deck!"

Mrs. Halton, who was No. 9, called to her maid, and then spoke to the
Frenchwoman.

"But I will gladly let you have my cabin," she said. "I do not mind the
sea. I shall be quite happy on deck. Indeed it is no kindness. Very
likely I should not have gone into my cabin at all."

The poor lady nearly wept with joy, and would willingly have paid Mrs.
Halton ten times the amount the private cabin had cost; but that lady
refused to make a start in trading at this time in her life, and having
secured a sheltered corner watched for a little the inboarding of the
passengers, but soon lost herself in her own reflections.

Ah, but how pleasant they were! She was coming home after a year abroad
which had begun in widowhood and loneliness and misery and shattered
health, and was now returning, restored and comforted, to her friends
and all that made life so engrossingly pleasant a business. No one
deserved friends more thoroughly than she, and she was rich in that
priceless capital of human affection. Sorrows and trials she had had in
plenty in her life, but these the sweetness of her nature had
transformed, so that from being things difficult to bear, she had built
up with them her own character. Sorrow had increased her own power of
sympathy; out of trials she had learnt patience; and failure and the
gradual sinking of one she had loved into the bottomless slough of evil
habit had but left her with an added dower of pity and tolerance.

So the past had no sting left, and if iron had ever entered into her
soul it now but served to make it strong. She was still young, too; it
was not near sunset with her yet, nor even midday, and the future that,
humanly speaking, she counted to be hers was almost dazzling in its
brightness. For love had dawned for her again, and no uncertain love,
wrapped in the mists of memory, but one that had ripened through liking
and friendship and intimacy into the authentic glory. He wa