slipped out and out from under the Black Swan, till she lay on the bottom with a drunken list, and the hours crept along with dreary slowness through the tiresome night, one disposition after another succumbed to the inevitable and became cattish or bearish, according to sex. But the very first disposition of all to go permanently bad was that of Marien Dounay. Young Burbeck thought he understood to the full her capacity to be disagreeable, but learned in the first hour that this was a ridiculously mistaken assumption.
Nor could any mere petulance on account of weariness or cramped quarters among people who under these circumstances speedily became a bore to themselves and to each other, account for her behavior. Never had Rollie seen so many manifestations of her feline restlessness, or her wiry endurance. When other women had sunk exhausted to sleep upon a cushion in a corner, or upon the shoulders of an escort who obligingly supported the fair head with his own weary body, Miss Dounay sat bolt and desperate, staring at the myriad shoreward lights as if they held some secret her wilful eyes would yet bore out of them.
Though Rollie loyally tried, as endurance would permit, to watch with Marien through the night, sustaining snubs and shafts with humble patience and venturing an occasional dismal attempt at cheer, the first sign of relaxation in Miss Dounay's mood was vouchsafed not to him but to François.
This was when at eight o'clock the next morning, after toiling painfully up the steps at the landing pier, her eyes fell upon the huge black limousine, with the faithful chauffeur, his arms folded upon the wheel, his head leaning forward upon them, sound asleep. He had been there since ten-thirty of the night before. Other chauffeurs had waited and fumed, had sputtered to and fro
