Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II " My dear Helen, I really may as well tell you at once, that I don't like your walking alone, in the dark, down on that lower deck that looks steeragy, where there are no chairs, and the men go to smoke after dinner." " Do they? I hadn't noticed," said Helen, indifferently. She had come into their rooms with a brighter look upon her face, born of the delicious swoop of salt air upon it, and the sound of that churning music of the waves with which the sea rewards the good ship when she takes her ocean crests easily and settles down to her grand Atlantic stride. " I lost you, after dinner, when I was sitting on the boat deck with Mrs. Vereker, hearing all about her daughter's divorce and her son's appendicitis. No wonder the poor woman goes abroad for a change. And, really, I'm glad, after all, we are not with them at table, since she can talk of nothing else, and much as one may feel for a friend'stroubles, it is nicer to hear a little about other people's, too! I was telling Mrs. Vereker— though, dear me, she hardly lets one speak —how dreadfully they had served us about the people they put us with, and, my dear, what do you think? It never does to judge by first appearances at sea, for as it turns out, Mr. Vereker—who is that kind of a fussing, Miss Nancyish man, and loves to study the passenger list—has discovered that every soul at our table, except those dreadful Southerners, has a title! The one with glasses, who speaks such funny English, is a German Graf, of a family of fabulous antiquity, who has been to Washington to see his ambassador about sending one of his sons to learn agriculture in America. The one who gobbles so, and complains of the draught on his back, and had the port shut, is Prince Zourikoff, a Russian savant, who has written a book cal...