Van," replied Zaidie, dropping back into her familiar form
of address, but speaking even more frigidly than her chaperon had done,
"you seem to forget that, however extraordinary our situation may be
just now, we are in the care of an English gentleman. Lord Redgrave was
a friend of my father's, the only man who believed in his ideals, the
only man who realised them, the only man----"
"That you were ever in love with, eh?" said Mrs. Van Stuyler with a snap
in her voice. "Is that so? Ah, I begin to see something now."
"And I think, if you possess your soul in patience, you will see
something more before long," snapped Miss Zaidie in reply. Then she
stopped abruptly and the flush on her cheek deepened, for at that moment
Lord Redgrave came up the companion way from the lower deck carrying a
big silver tray with a coffee pot, three cups and saucers, a rack of
toast, and a couple of plates of bread and butter and cake.
Just then a sort of social miracle happened. The fact was that Mrs. Van
Stuyler had never before had her early coffee brought to her by a peer
of the British Realm. She thought it a little humiliating afterwards,
but for the moment all sorts of conventional barriers seemed to melt
away. After all she was a woman, and some years ago she had been a young
one. Lord Redgrave was an almost perfect specimen of English manhood in
its early prime.
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