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"No," answered Norah, rather indifferently. "You will some day all the world will. Stellasis is one of our great men in India. Mrs. Stellasis is a great lady." This was a prophecy. They went on deck, and Mark Ruthine effected the introduction.
She thought of the "specimen" slumbering in a berth six sizes too large for it, and reflected that Norah Hood might snatch considerable happiness out of the contract after all. "Do you know anything of the old playmate?" Mrs. Stellasis asked Dr. Ruthine suddenly one afternoon in the Red Sea.
He had a grave way with him, this doctor, and could put on a fatherly manner when the moment needed it. Norah listened with a gravity equal to his own. She listened, moreover, with an intelligence which he noted. "If you will come," he said, "on deck again, I will introduce you to a very kind friend of mine Mrs. Stellasis. You have heard of John Stellasis?"
There was a consultation of the authorities Mrs Stellasis, namely, and the captain, and Mark Ruthine. The captain disgraced himself early in the proceedings. "Perhaps it is only a flirtation," he said. Whereupon Mrs. Stellasis laughed scornfully, and the mariner collapsed.
Moreover, the consultation resulted in nothing, although Stellasis himself joined it, looking grave and thoughtful behind his great grey moustache. "Known Manly Fenn for ten years," he said; "but I am afraid of him still. I cannot speak to him. Can you not say something to the girl?" But Mrs. Stellasis shook her head with determination.
Norah still saw a good deal of Mrs. Stellasis. She still took a great interest in the "specimen," whose small ailments received her careful attention. With Mark Ruthine she was almost familiar, in her quiet way. She came to his little surgery to get such minute potions as the "specimen" might require. She even got to know the bottles, and mixed the drugs herself while he laughingly watched her.
Finally, the devil as the captain bluffly affirmed brought it to pass that he, Manly Fenn, should take passage in the Mahanaddy on the voyage of which we have to do. It was very sudden, and many thorough things are so. It happened somewhere in the Red Sea, and Mrs. Stellasis was probably the first to sniff danger in the breeze.
Stellasis a good woman and a mother pitied Norah Hood with an increasing pity; for as the quiet Mediterranean days wore to a close she had established without doubt the fact that the engagement to the old playmate was a sordid contract entered into in all innocence by a girl worthy of a better fate. But Mrs. Stellasis hoped for the best.
That was the worst of it they were not the sort of persons to whom one can say such things. The captain was technically responsible, but he had proved himself utterly incompetent. "No," said Mrs. Stellasis finally. There was nothing to be done but hope for the best. Of course, Mrs. Stellasis was without conscience quite without justice. It is to be feared that nearly all women are.
She goes bumping down Channel, rolling through the Bay, and, by the time that Gibraltar is left behind, she has shaken her passengers into their places. Norah Hood shook down very quietly into the neighbourhood of Mrs. Stellasis, who liked her and began to understand her. Mrs.
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