y passed, Mrs. Milray's angry eyes seemed to search her out for
scorn whenever Clementina found herself the centre of her last night's
celebrity. Many people came up and spoke to her, at first with a certain
expectation of knowingness in her, which her simplicity baffled. Then
they either dropped her, and went away, or stayed and tried to make
friends with her because of this; an elderly English clergyman and his
wife were at first compassionately anxious about her, and then
affectionately attentive to her in her obvious isolation. Clementina's
simple-hearted response to their advances appeared to win while it
puzzled them; and they seemed trying to divine her in the strange double
character she wore to their more single civilization. The theatrical
people thought none the worse of her for her simple-hearted ness,
apparently; they were both very sweet to her, and wanted her to promise
to come and see them in their little box in St. John's Wood. Once,
indeed, Clementina thought she saw relenting in Mrs. Milray's glance, but
it hardened again as Lord Lioncourt and Mr. Ewins came up to her, and
began to talk with her. She could not go to her chair beside Milray, for
his wife was now keeping guard of him on the other side with unexampled
devotion. Lord Lioncourt asked her to walk with him and she consented.
She thought that Mr. Ewins would go and sit by Mrs. Milray, of course,
but when she came round in her tour of the ship, Mrs. Milray was sitting
alone beside her husband.

After dinner she went to the library and got a book, but she could not
read there; every chair was taken by people writing letters to send back
from Queenstown in the morning; and she strayed into the ladies' sitting
room, where no ladies seemed ever to sit, and lost herself in a miserable
muse over her open page.

Some one looked in at the door, and then advanced within and came
straight to Clementina; she knew without looking up that it was Mrs.
Milray. "I have been hunting for you, Miss Claxon," she said, in a voice
frostily fierce, and with a bearing furiously formal. "I have a letter to
Miss Milray that my busband wished me to write for you, and give you with
his compliments."

"Thank you," said Clementina. She rose mechanically to her feet, and at
the same time Mrs. Milray sat down.

"You will find Miss Milray," she continued, with the same glacial
hauteur, "a very agreeable and cultivated lady."

Clementina said nothing; and Mrs. Milray adde