"He didn't do it, John; just missed the tip of my ear, and I hit him in the face. I ran away to Miss Carstairs and Lord Clandonald, and told them, or rather didn't tell them—they understood. Clandonald looked just as you do now, and put himself in front of me, and I was so glad to be protected, when all the ship was saying mean, spiteful things of me, that for a little while I thought I must be in love with Lord Clandonald——"
"This alone is worth crossing the ocean to hear," commented Glynn with bitter sarcasm.
"Well, you know I told you of it at the time. It was a perfectly hopeless thing, anyhow. Even if you hadn't been there, I couldn't marry a divorced man whose wife is living. It's just one of those fashionable habits that doesn't happen to appeal to me."
"Posey, you are unconquerable," he said, a gleam of amusement coming into his eyes.
"You might as well hear all the rest. After I had those nasty letters, I kept away from him and got daddy to give up London, because I'd promised we would go down to lunch at Beaumanoir, his home. It was my first and last chance at an English ancestral mansion, I reckon. The last night aboard, when we were at anchor near Liverpool, in a fog, daddy and I met him, by accident, on deck. Dear old dad, who can't be made to suspect anybody, would run off after his letter of credit, that he'd packed in a steamer coat and almost sent ashore. I was left with Lord Clandonald. I tell you, John, you couldn't have treated me better than he did then. There was one little minute when I was scared, though. He was furious when I told him of the anonymous letters. He said there was only one who could have done it, but how, in God's name, did she get upon that ship? And then he asked me to let him stand between me and all such people always——"
"You let him ask you that?"
"John, you know when a man and a girl are together things get said that they never dreamed of saying. I knew like a shot I ought to have told Clandonald about you before. But how could I introduce the subject in cold blood——"
"I am afraid it was cold blood," interpolated John ruefully.
"Well, you couldn't expect me to thrill and tremble, and all those things they do in novels, when I'd said yes in a telephone booth, and never seen you after. I tried to, John. Honestly, I did, but it wasn't the least use."
Glynn would have been more than mortal not to laugh at her look of humble apology.