Page:Alice Lauder.pdf/31

THOSE two seem to be getting on very well,” observed the captain to Lady May. There was the smallest soupçon of bitterness in his tone. As captain of the “Suez” he knew his social rights, and he did not feel flattered when Lady May temporarily adopted him, now and then, as a substitute for another.

Through the open door of the deck music-saloon they could see the two artists absorbed in working their passage through a difficult sonata of Beethoven; while good Mrs. Wigs sat sentinel at the outer door (for the sake of coolness), but so placed that no syllable should escape her attentive ear. Sometimes Alice would leave off playing and vigorously beat time for a bar or two, with a vindictive air; sometimes she would stop altogether, and, throwing her hands up over her ears, would rock herself to and fro with an agonized expression, when some mistake in her companion’s part was more than