the wharf rolled in, black and heavy, with a sullen beat, and the sky
shut down close to the water, except when a sudden stronger gust of wind
cleared a luminous space for an instant. Stormbound: that is what the
Hygeia was--a winter resort without any doubt.

The hotel was put to a test of its qualities. There was no getting
abroad in such a storm. But the Hygeia appeared at its best in this
emergency. The long glass corridors, where no one could venture in the
arctic temperature, gave, nevertheless, an air of brightness and
cheerfulness to the interior, where big fires blazed, and the company
were exalted into good-fellowship and gayety--a decorous Sunday gayety
--by the elemental war from which they were securely housed.

If the defenders of their country in the fortress mounted guard that
morning, the guests at the Hygeia did not see them, but a good many of
them mounted guard later at the hotel, and offered to the young ladies
there that protection which the brave like to give the fair.
Notwithstanding this, Mr. Stanhope King could not say the day was dull.
After a morning presumably spent over works of a religious character,
some of the young ladies, who had been the life of the excursion the day
before, showed their versatility by devising serious amusements befitting
the day, such as twenty questions on Scriptural subjects, palmistry,
which on another day is an aid to mild flirtation, and an exhibition of
mind-reading, not public--oh, dear, no--but with a favored group in a
private parlor. In none of these groups, however, did Mr. King find Miss
Benson, and when he encountered her after dinner in the reading-room, she
confessed that she had declined an invitation to assist at the
mind-reading, partly from a lack of interest, and partly from a
reluctance to dabble in such things.