III
The reader learns something of the career of an international beauty, and attends vicariously an artistic entertainment in the second-cabin saloon.
WHATEVER may have been her faults, it is not to be denied that only Mrs. Trevelyan prevented another and more serious explosion of wrath on the part of the Captain against his ne’er-do-weel Marconi operator. As a peacemaker she was beyond criticism. The Captain, pretending to be quite impervious to feminine charms, nevertheless allowed himself to be cajoled and flattered until he not only revoked his orders so far as visitors to the wireless house were concerned, but offered to accompany the lady there himself and explain everything to her. For the Captain, in spite of his appearance, was human, and, as he himself said aloud to himself in front of the looking-glass in his cabin: “She ’s a damned handsome woman!”
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