to the height of the possessors, certain energetic people walked
ceaselessly up and down the deck, sometimes flattening themselves
against the railing to let others who met them pass by, and sometimes,
when the ship rolled a little, stumbling against an outstretched foot
or two without making any elaborate apology for doing so.

Margaret only glanced at the familiar sight, but she made a little
movement of annoyance almost directly, and took up the book that lay
open and face downwards on her knee; she became absorbed in it so
suddenly as to convey the impression that she was not really reading
at all.

She had seen Mr. Van Torp and Paul Griggs walking together and coming
towards her.

The millionaire was shorter than his companion and more clumsily made,
though not by any means a stout man. Though he did not look like a
soldier he had about him the very combative air which belongs to so
many modern financiers of the Christian breed. There was the bull-dog
jaw, the iron mouth, and the aggressive blue eye of the man who takes
and keeps by force rather than by astuteness. Though his face had
lines in it and his complexion was far from brilliant he looked
scarcely forty years of age, and his short, rough, sandy hair had not
yet begun to turn grey.

He was not ugly, but Margaret had always seen something in his face
that repelled her. It was some lack of proportion somewhere, which
she could not precisely define; it was something that was out of
the common type of faces, but that was disquieting rather than
interesting. Instead of wondering what it meant, those who noticed it