Yet such little friendly frauds are sweet compared with the extremes of brutal frankness to which our dearest friends sometimes think it their duty to go with us, for our own good.
After a time Griggs spoke to her, and she was glad to hear his voice.
She had grown to like him during the voyage, even more than she had ever thought probable.

She had even gone so far as to wonder whether, if he had been twenty-five years younger, he might not have been the one man she had ever met whom she might care to marry, and she had laughed at the involved terms of the hypothesis as soon as she thought of it.

Griggs had never been married, but elderly people remembered that there had been some romantic tale about his youth, when he had been an unknown young writer struggling for life as a newspaper correspondent.
'You saw the notice of Miss Bamberger's death, I suppose,' he said, turning his grey eyes to hers.
He had not alluded to the subject during the voyage.
'Yes,' Margaret answered, wondering why he broached it now.
'The notice said that she died of heart failure, from shock,' Griggs continued.

'I should like to know what you think about it, as you were with her when she died.

Have you any idea that she may have died of anything else ?' 'No.' Margaret was surprised.