"Maybe. If I can slip into New York with my little baskets while all the other buyers are still over here, cabling tearfully for money to get home or asking their firms to send a warship to fetch them—why, I guess the pennant's mine all right."
The eternal feminine, so strong in Iowa's transplanted stock, prompted a mischievous question:
"Then you won't be leaving somebody behind when you sail—somebody who seemed awfully nice and—foreigny and all that? All our American girls find the moonlight over on this side infectious. Witness me—a 'finishing trip' abroad after school days—and see where I've finished—on a Rock!" Lady Crandall bubbled laughter. A shrewd downward sweep of her eye was just in time to catch a flush mounting to Jane's cheeks.
"Well, a Mysterious Stranger has crossed my path," Jane admitted. "He was very nice, but mysterious."
"Oh!" A delighted gurgle from the older woman. "Tell me all about it—a secret for these ancient walls to hear."
Jane was about to reply when second thought checked her tongue. Before her flashed that strange meeting with Captain Woodhouse the night before—his denial of their former meeting, followed by his curious insistence on her keeping faith with him by not revealing the fact of their acquaintance. She had promised—why she had promised she could no more divine than the reason for his asking; but a promise it was that she would not betray his confidence. More than once since that minute in the reception room of the Hotel Splendide Jane Gerson had reviewed the whole baffling circumstance in her mind and a growing resentment at this stranger's demand, as well as at her own compliance with it, was rising in her heart. Still, this Captain Woodhouse was "different," and—this Jane sensed without effort to analyze—the mystery which he threw about himself but served to set him apart from the common run of men. She evaded Lady Crandall's probing with a shrug of the shoulders.
"It's a secret which I myself do not know, Lady Crandall—and never will."
Back to the o'erweening lure of the gown the flitting fancy of the general's lady betook itself.
"You—don't think this is a shade too young for me, Miss Gerson?" Anxiety pleaded to be quashed.
"Nonsense!" Jane laughed.