“And this is my dear little girl, Bertha Renville. I was your father’s friend and I will be yours. But how were you saved? We heard that all on board the fishing boat were drowned.”
“If we had been men,” cried Jennie, “we should have been drowned too. We were thrown into the water by the collision, but our dresses saved our lives. They would not have done so had we remained in the water long enough for them to get saturated, but they held us up, and we were seen by one of the officers on Her Majesty’s frigate Victoria which ran us down. The young man who saw us was a lieutenant. He had the vessel stopped and came to our rescue in a boat. Oh, I think he was just the loveliest young man I ever met in my life, don’t you, Bertha?”
“A very natural thought,” said the Countess, with a smile. “Young ladies are very apt to fall in love with handsome young men who save their lives.”
Bertha flushed perceptibly. She thought of the Thames and one who had saved her life on a previous occasion.
“And he had such a romantic name,” said Jennie.
“Of course I would not think of falling in love with him for I am a married woman, but I suppose there is no harm in my falling in love with his name—Claude Levaille, he said it was.”
“But where have you been all this time?” asked the Countess.
“Oh, that’s the strangest part of it,” said Jennie. “Come, Bertha, I have done all the talking so far. You must tell the rest of the story.”
“It is a very simple one,” said Bertha. “The frigate was bound for Marseilles. The admiral said he would have been delighted to put us ashore at some point near Paris, but he was under strict orders to proceed at once to the Mediterranean.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” said the Countess. “Mr. De Vinne told me that there was likelihood of a war with Russia.”