"Oh, to myself," he replied, smiling. "I am not a philanthropist—quite the other way about."
"Then, whatever it is, you oughtn't to do it," said the girl, decidedly. "It will be horrid of you to as much as contemplate anything of the kind. You had much better do good lest evil befall; and the opportunity occurs right here, at this very moment."
"I shall be most happy—without prejudice to my intentions as to the reverse of the medal," said Beaumanoir, lightly.
"Then help me to avoid a lecture from my mother by taking me for a promenade," proceeded Leonie, indicating a portly lady who had ascended from the lower deck and was peering about in search. "She is the best and dearest of mothers, but she has set her heart on a vain thing, and it is becoming the least bit tiresome. I can see that she is going to din it into me again, if she catches me. Her idea is that the sole duty of an American girl going to England is to 'spread herself,' as they say out West, to marry an English duke."
His Grace of Beaumanoir listened with an unmoved countenance.
"Yes," he said, "to marry a duke might—probably would—be an unmitigated evil. I will help you to avoid it with pleasure. Let us walk by all means, Miss Sherman, if you don't mind my awkward limp."
So they joined the procession of promenaders, and there and then cemented a friendship which ripened quickly, as friendships between the opposite sexes do at sea. The haughty salesladies of the dry-goods store had not deigned to notice the counting-house drudge, and Leonie's piquant beauty made instant captive of one who had been deprived of the society of women for over a year. She had all the frank camaraderie of the well-bred American, and her eager anticipations of the good time she was to have in Europe were infectious. In her company Beaumanoir was able to forget the dark shadow hanging over him, and to give himself up to the enjoyment of the hour. He began by being deeply grateful to her for taking him out of himself; and gratitude to a charming girl with a ravishing figure and a complexion of tinted ivory is like to have its heels trod by a warmer sentiment.
Leonie, in her turn, was interested in the reserved young Englishman, who had so little to say about his doings in America, and less about his position and prospects in his native land. As he paced with his slight limp at her side or lounged with her at the rail, she tried to draw him out; but she could get nothing from him but that he had been in New York on business, and that business was taking him home. Yet, though reticent on his own affairs, he talked freely about all that concerned herself, and painted vivid word-pictures of the delights that awaited her in London.
The girl, having nothing to conceal, told him freely of herself and of her plans and projects. She and her mother were going to stay with English friends in London till the end of the season, when perhaps they would run over to Paris and Rome for a month before returning to America in the autumn. Her father, Senator Sherman, was to have accompanied them; but he had been detained by public business at Washington, and was to join them a little later in London.
On the fifth day of the voyage, as the St. Paul was approaching the Irish coast, Leonie and Beaumanoir were sitting on deck after dinner, chatting in the twilight, when she suddenly laid her hand on his arm.