unwatched, I do not know: or, rather did not _then_ know; but it soon
appeared that the dignity of solitude was not to her taste. She paced
the deck once or twice backwards and forwards; she looked with a little
sour air of disdain at the flaunting silks and velvets, and the bears
which thereon danced attendance, and eventually she approached me and
spoke.

"Are you fond of a sea-voyage?" was her question.

I explained that my _fondness_ for a sea-voyage had yet to undergo the
test of experience; I had never made one.

"Oh, how charming!" cried she. "I quite envy you the novelty: first
impressions, you know, are so pleasant. Now I have made so many, I
quite forget the first: I am quite _blasee_ about the sea and all that."

I could not help smiling.

"Why do you laugh at me?" she inquired, with a frank testiness that
pleased me better than her other talk.

"Because you are so young to be _blasee_ about anything."

"I am seventeen" (a little piqued).

"You hardly look sixteen. Do you like travelling alone?"

"Bah! I care nothing about it. I have crossed the Channel ten times,
alone; but then I take care never to be long alone: I always make
friends."

"You will scarcely make many friends this voyage, I think" (glancing at
the Watson-group, who were now laughing and making a great deal of
noise on deck).

"Not of those odious men and women," said she: "such people should be
steerage passengers. Are you going to school?"

"No."

"Where are you going?"

"I have not the least idea--beyond, at least, the port of Boue-Marine."

She stared, then carelessly ran on:

"I am going to school. Oh, the number of foreign schools I have been at
in my life! And yet I am quite an ignoramus. I know nothing--nothing in
the world--I assure you; except that I play and dance beautifully,--and
French and German of course I know, to speak; but I can't read or write
them very well. Do you know they wanted me to translate a page of an
easy German book into English the other day, and I couldn't do it. Papa
was so mortified: he says it looks as if M. de Bassompierre--my
godpapa, who pays all my school-bills--had thrown away all his money.
And then, in matters of information--in history, geography, arithmetic,
and so on, I am quite a baby; and I write English so badly--such
spelling and grammar, they tell me. Into the bargain I have quite
forgotten my religion; they call me a Protestant, you know, but really
I am not sure whethe