Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/307



girl stood watching the brooding Englishman and the American, cheerful and alert again, pass about a turn of the deck. Then she left the rail, and laughed as she confessed to herself that she was waiting, with undeniable impatience, for the afternoon.

She sat at luncheon at a table quite distant from the one to which young Preston and the Englishman were assigned, but she noticed that they had both finished and left the salon before she came in.

Directly after luncheon she sought out her book and, as she went up on deck, she discovered that the deck steward had replaced Preston's chair beside hers and thrown his steamer rug over it. But the American himself had not yet appeared.

Though it was not yet three, something 281