Rosalie was not weary, but
she began to be bewildered. As she had never been a clever girl or quick
to perceive, and had spent her life among women-indulging American men,
she was not prepared with any precedent which made her situation clear.
The first time Sir Nigel showed his temper to her she simply stared at
him, her eyes looking like those of a puzzled, questioning child. Then
she broke into her nervous little laugh, because she did not know what
else to do. At his second outbreak her stare was rather startled and she
did not laugh.
Her first awakening was to an anxious wonderment concerning certain
moods of gloom, or what seemed to be gloom, to which he seemed prone. As
she lay in her steamer chair he would at times march stiffly up and
down the deck, apparently aware of no other existence than his own,
his features expressing a certain clouded resentment of whose very
unexplainableness she secretly stood in awe. She was not astute enough,
poor girl, to leave him alone, and when with innocent questionings she
endeavoured to discover his trouble, the greatest mystification she
encountered was that he had the power to make her feel that she was in
some way taking a liberty, and showing her lack of tact and perspicuity.
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