The doctor and the steward then quitted the state-room, and its two
occupants, being left alone, surveyed each other curiously.

The active and energetic girl who had acted as spokeswoman and directress
throughout the brief scene we have just described had let fall her
waterproof cloak and stood arrayed in a black velvet jacket and dark silk
skirt, both much the worse for wear, and contrasting sadly with the neat
but simple traveling costume of her companion. But about her slender,
finely-proportioned figure there was an air of style and grace which lent
an elegance even to her shabby and faded finery, and which was wanting in
the owner of the fresher and more appropriate attire. Her face was
beautiful, with a singular and weird beauty which owed nothing of its
fascinations to the ordinary charms of delicate outlines and dainty
coloring. Her features were small and attenuated, and her complexion was
of a sallow paleness, whose lack of freshness seemed caused by dissipation
and late hours or by the ravages of illness. Heavy masses of soft silken
hair, black as midnight, with bluish reflections on its lustrous waves
_(bleu à force d'être noir_, as Alexandre Dumas describes such tresses),
untortured by crimping-pins or curling-tongs, were rolled back in plain
folds above her low, broad brow. Her eyes would have lent beauty to a
plainer face. Large almost to a fault, of that dark, clear blue which is
too perfect and too transparent ever to look black even under the shadow
of such long, thick eyelashes as shaded them in the present instance, they
were perfectly magnificent; and their lustrous azure and ever-varying
expression lent to the mobile countenance of their possessor its most
potent and peculiar charm.

She was the first to speak. "Do you not think you had better retire to
your berth?" she asked. "The rocking of the ship is increasing, and we had