Mrs. Locke’s clear brown eyes looked into the earnest face of the girl, and then a little unwillingly, “It wasn’t in the least my business,” she added.
“What did you think you heard?”
“Didn’t the purser come to the door asking if Miss Mar was ‘all right’? And didn’t you call out, ‘Is that you, Louis?’ and didn’t you run after him?” As Hildegarde’s perplexed face yielded to a gleam of horrified enlightenment, “Of course it wasn’t any business of mine,” Mrs. Locke repeated, and looked intently at the sea-birds flocking in a new place.
“Do you—do you mean you think his name is—”
“I don’t think. I know his name is Louis Napoleon Brown.”
Hildegarde gasped out, “Then that was why!”
“Why—”
“Why he was so—surprising. His name daring to be Louis! The purser! Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” and the girl began suddenly to laugh, and grew more and more convulsed the longer she thought about it, till she became hysterical. Mrs. Locke looked gravely at her, even frowning slightly.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. He thought I meant him. Oh! oh!”
“You didn’t?”