“Weren’t you talking to Captain O’Leary?”
“He talked to me.”
“Isn’t he charming? All the women are so excited about him.”
“That’s what’s the matter with him.”
“Is he conceited?”
“Fearfully!” quoth Isabelle.
She went over that interview dozens of times. Of course he would never look at her again. She remembered how Mrs. Darlington purred over him—how Madam Van Dyke patted him. That was the way to make him like you, but she had scratched and spit at him, like an angry kitten. She couldn’t imagine why she had acted like that. She admired him immensely. He was more attractive than Jerry Paxton or Sidney Cartel or any man she had ever loved, and yet—she had deliberately made him hate her. Well, anyhow, she liked the idea of her heart being as hard as the rocks in Flodden Field. It had an important sound. He could never say that to the gushing Mrs. Darlington, or any of the other women who ran around after him.
So she closed the chapter of their acquaintance on the boat, but she worked out a scene or two at Bermuda, including an aeroplane flight in which he and she were lost in the clouds. On the whole she preferred the things she made up to the things that happened.
As they neared the Islands the weather grew warmer. White clothes appeared on deck. Captain O’Leary appeared in an undress uniform that caused a flutter in feminine hearts. The night of the day of her encounter with her hero was stuffy and very hot.
Isabelle was restless and wakeful. She tossed and turned and tried to banish all thoughts of the Irishman, but it was no use. She leaned out of her upper berth to gaze down upon the sleeping features of Miss Watts.