hings are often very obscure," said Milray, with a patient
smile.

Clementina wanted to ask him if Mrs. Milray had said anything to him
about her, but she could not, and he did not speak again till he heard
her stir in rising from her chair. Then he said, "I haven't forgotten
that letter to my sister, Clementina. I will give it to you before we
leave the steamer. Are you going to stay in Liverpool, over night, or
shall you go up to London at once?"

"I don't know. It will depend upon how Mrs. Landa feels."

"Well, we shall see each other again. Don't be worried." He looked up at
her with a smile, and he could not see how forlornly she returned it.

As the day 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