The excitement of the upward rush, and what was left of the
momentary physical fear, had flushed her cheeks and lighted her eyes.
Even Mrs. Van Stuyler thought her looking, if possible, more beautiful
than she had done under the most favourable of terrestrial
circumstances. There was a something else too, which she didn't
altogether like to see, a sort of resignation to her fate which, in a
young lady situated as she was then, Mrs. Van Stuyler considered to be
distinctly improper.
"It is rather startling, isn't it?" she said, with hardly a trace of
emotion in her voice; "but I have no doubt that everything will be all
right in the end."
"Everything all right, my dear Zaidie! What on earth, or I might say
under heaven, do you mean?"
"I mean," replied Zaidie even more composedly than before, and also with
a little tightening of her lips, "that Lord Redgrave is the owner of
this vessel, and that therefore it is quite impossible that anything out
of the way could happen to us--I mean anything more out of the way than
this wonderful jump from the sea to the sky has been, unless, of course,
Lord Redgrave is going to take us for a voyage among the stars."
"Zaidie Rennick!" said Mrs. Van Stuyler, bridling up into her most
frigid dignity, "I am more than surprised to hear you talk in such a
strain. Perfectly safe, indeed! Has it not struck you that we are
absolutely at this man's--this Lord Redgrave's, mercy, that he can take
us where he likes, and treat us just as he pleases?"
"My dear Mrs.
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