he kissed me a few
times and stabbed my pride a few times."

Pauline stopped turning her rings--she rose slowly, mechanically,
looked straight at Gladys.

"That is not true," she said calmly.

Gladys laughed sardonically. "You don't know the cold and haughty
Governor Scarborough. There's fire under the ice. I can feel the
places on my face where it scorched. Can't you see them?"

Pauline gave her a look of disgust. "How like John Dumont's sister!"
she thought. And she shut herself in her room and stayed there,
pleading illness in excuse, until Gladys was gone.

XXIII.

A SEA SURPRISE.

On the third day from New York, Gladys was so far recovered from
seasickness that she dragged herself to the deck. The water was fairly
smooth, but a sticky, foggy rain was falling. A deck-steward put her
steamer-chair in a sheltered corner. Her maid and a stewardess swathed
her in capes and rugs; she closed her eyes and said: "Now leave me,
please, and don't come near me till I send for you."

She slept an hour. When she awoke she felt better. Some one had drawn
a chair beside hers and was seated there--a man, for she caught the
faint odor of a pipe, though the wind was the other way. She turned
her head. It was Langdon, whom she had not seen since she went below a
few hours after Sandy Hook disappeared. Indeed, she had almost
forgotten that he was on board and that her brother had asked him to
look after her. He was staring at her in an absent-minded way, his
wonted expression of satire and lazy good-humor fainter than usual.
In fact, his face was almost serious.

"That pipe," she grumbled. "Please do put it away."

He tossed it into the sea. "Beg pardon," he said. "It was stupid of
me. I was absorbed in--in my book."

"What's the name of it?"

He turned it to glance at the cover, but she went on: "No--don't tell
me. I've no desire to know. I asked merely to confirm my suspicion."

"You're right," he said. "I wasn't reading. I was looking at you."

"That was impertinent. A man should not look at a woman when she
doesn't intend him to look."

"Then I'd never look at all. I'm interested only in things not meant
for my eyes. I might even read letters not addressed to me if I didn't
know how dull letters are. No intelligent person ever says anything in
a letter nowadays. They use the telegraph for ordinary correspondence,
and telepathy for the other kind. But it was interesting--looking at