There were a good many persons on deck but she was left tolerably undisturbed.

Occasionally a lady would stop and speak to her--the men, who were not altogether blind to her beauty, would have liked perhaps to do the same, if her preoccupied air had not made a kind of barrier about her, too great to be broken through without more warrant than a two days' chance association; but she was thinking or dreaming, and never troubled herself about them.
The day was very bright, and there was a ceaseless pleasure in watching the ripples of the sea as they rose into the cold silvery sunlight and then passed on into the shadow of the ship; or in tracing far away, the broad even track marked by edges of tiny bubbles, where the vessel's course had been.

Gradually she became aware through her abstraction of a greater stir and buzz of conversation on the deck behind her; she turned, and seeing everybody looking in one direction, rose and looked too.

A lady standing beside her said, "It is the Cunard steamer for New York.

We think there are some friends of ours on board, but I am afraid we shall not pass near enough to find out." "Oh, how I wish we could!" Lucia answered, now thoroughly roused, for the idea that Maurice also might be on board suddenly flashed into her mind.
She leaned forward over the railing of the deck, and caught sight of the 'India' coming quickly in the opposite direction, and could even distinguish the black mass of her passengers assembled like those of the 'Atalanta' to watch the passing vessel.