Page:Cruise of the Jasper B (1916).djvu/71

 can happen in a very short space of time. Ten minutes before, Cleggett had never seen this lady, and now he was giving orders at her merest suggestion. But in those ten minutes he had seen her weep, he had seen her faint, he had seen her recover herself; he had seen her emerge from the depths of despair into something more like self-control; he had carried her in his arms, she had laughed at him, she had twice impulsively grasped him by the arm, she had smiled at him three times, she had sighed twice, she had frowned once; she had swept upon him bringing with her an impression of the mysterious. Many men are married to women for years without seeing their wives display so many and such varied phases; to Cleggett it seemed not so much that he was making a new acquaintance as renewing one that had been broken off suddenly at some distant date. Cleggett, like the true-hearted gentleman and born romanticist that he was, resolved to serve her without question until such time as she chose to make known to him her motives for her actions.

"Do you know," she said, softly and gravely to Cleggett as George and Elmer deposited the oblong box upon a spot which she indicated near the