while I was trying to swallow my anger Suddenly Mrs. Simpkin-Briston leaned forward, and looked up into my face with a horrible satirical smile.
'What is it you want?' she said contemptuously.
I gazed at her in amazement. Her face grew hard, like the face of a woman fighting for her life, and I shuddered as I lay back in my chair without replying to her impossible question. What was there to say to such a woman as this? Her next words would have brought me to my feet in a fury had I not felt that half a dozen curious eyes were fixed upon us. The knowledge of that fact alone controlled me.
'I suppose you are in love with the Boy,' she said, and laughed softly. It was an evil, mocking little laugh, that made me want to throttle her.
What I should have said I don't know if I had not just then caught sight of Boy at the other end of the deck. He was coming towards us, though he had not seen us yet
'It's no use,' the woman laughed in the same mocking voice. She, too, had seen Boy coming, and so hurried over the next words, perhaps saying more than she had meant to say. 'Do your worst He will marry me at Bombay, if—if somebody else doesn't.'
I was just about staggered at her audacity for the moment, and before I had time to speak Boy joined us. His grateful smile at me as he sat down made me want to laugh and cry at once. Yet for his sake I sat on there for a few minutes longer, and even laughed and spoke to the woman again for his
