The Major began to laugh.
“What’s the joke?” inquired Larry, joining them.
“It’s a secret between Major O’Dell and me. On your sacred honour, Major, you won’t tell,” said Isabelle.
“On my sacred honour.”
“Go away, O’Dell, and let me make my peace with the Cricket.”
“Major O’Dell, you will stay, if you please.”
True to her promise to O’Dell, she played up and kept them all amused, but she never so much as looked at Larry. Thoroughly annoyed, he devoted himself conspicuously to Mrs. Darlington and Miss Devoe. But he might have been in China for all the impression his flirtation made on Isabelle. They landed late in the afternoon, with the Bryce-O’Leary feud still on.
Isabelle told the story of her capture to Miss Watts, but with that lady’s perverted English sense of humour, she thought O’Leary’s prank was funny. She knew that she ought to disapprove of it, but she only laughed.
Isabelle went off to read a letter which she found awaiting her, from her god-son Jean. It proved rather a surprise. She read it twice. It was undeniably a love-letter. In it he told her—that he adored her in a great many ways and a great many times. He had known all along that she was not old, and now that he saw how young she was, how lovely . . . it went on and on. He wished to address her father at once, and ask her hand in marriage. He enclosed a photograph of himself; he was quite good looking. It was a thrilling letter, but it took her breath away. How could he know she was young and lovely?
She answered it instantly, tearing up many sheets of paper in the process. She assured him that he was mistaken, that she was too old to think of marriage, even if she loved him—which she could not say she did, because she didn’t know him. Her father was long since dead, so he could not address him, etc., etc. In short, unless he could think of her as his devoted marraine they must end the correspondence, there and then.