"
"Crying? She doesn't look like that."
"Exactly, and that's what startled me. She came in to see me this
afternoon, as she has done before, and we talked of the weather and the
run of the ship and the manners of the stewardess and other such trifles,
and then suddenly, in the midst of it, as she sat there, on no visible
pretext, she burst into tears. I asked her what ailed her and tried to
comfort her, but she didn't explain; she said it was nothing, the effect
of the sea, of the monotony, of the excitement, of leaving home. I asked
her if it had anything to do with her prospects, with her marriage;
whether she finds as this draws near that her heart isn't in it. I told
her she mustn't be nervous, that I could enter into that--in short I said
what I could. All she replied was that she _is_ nervous, very nervous,
but that it was already over; and then she jumped up and kissed me and
went away. Does she look as if she has been crying?" Mrs. Nettlepoint
wound up.
"How can I tell, when she never quits that horrid veil? It's as if she
were ashamed to show her face."
"She's keeping it for Liverpool. But I don't like such incidents," said
Mrs. Nettlepoint. "I think I ought to go above."
"And is that where you want me to help you?"
"Oh with your arm and that sort of thing, yes.
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