Page:Knaves of Diamonds.pdf/263

244 She might have been a girl of twenty-four with an indifferent complexion, or a woman of thirty-five with a good one for that age; but she was stylish, smart, well-informed, and of irreproachable manners. More than this the most exacting man could hardly expect for the purposes of a steamboat flirtation, and Herr Ulrich was amply satisfied. So, too, was the young lady, more so, in fact, than she would have been had she known of the existence of the hostess of the "Golden Star."

To tell the truth, she was one of a class of women not infrequently found on board colonial-bound mail-ships. She had made two or three attempts to get settled in life at home; but, for one reason or another, they had not come off, and so she had wisely decided to try her luck in a land where women were fewer and men less fastidious than they were in the Old Country, while the bloom was still more or less attached to the