He touched her hand, still
warm and soft, with his own, which was icy. She withdrew it, turned her
eyes, whose fair, faint lustre, the pale forget-me-not blue, was
darkened by the antagonistic light to an amethystine shadow,
inquiringly upon him.
"There is some danger," she murmured.
"Yes. When you are not a mark for general observation, you shall hear
it."
"I would rather hear it standing."
"I told you the condition."
"Then I shall go and ask Captain Tarbell."
"And come sobbing back to me for 'reassurance.'"
"No," she said, quickly, "I should go down to Ursule."
"Ursule has a mattress on deck; I assisted her up."
"There is the captain! Now"----
He seized her hand and drew her down beside him. For an instant she
would have resisted, as the sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks
attested,--and then, with the instinctive feminine baseness that compels
every woman, when once she has met her master, she submitted.
"I am sorry, if you are offended," said he. "But the captain cannot
attend to you now, and it is necessary to be guarded in movement; for a
slight thing on such occasions may produce a panic."
"You should not have forced me to sit," said she, in a smothered voice,
without heeding him; "you had no right.
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