"How should I know? But suppose Lord Herbert Bohun decides simply to follow us to the end and go with us to Genoa?"
"Follow us to the end on the Dalilah and we on the Jenny? I should like to see him try it!" said the American. "See how we gain on him. But be careful, Chésy and his wife are coming in this direction. Well, Yvonne," she said to the pretty little Vicomtesse, blond and rosy in her dress of white serge, embroidered with the boat's colors, "you are not afraid to go so fast?"
"No," said Madame de Chésy, laughing; and, turning toward the bow, she drew in a long breath. "This air intoxicates me like champagne!"
"Do you see your brother, Marquise?" asked Chésy, pointing to one of the persons standing on the deck of the Dalilah. "He is beside the Prince. They must not feel very well satisfied. And his terriers, do you see his terriers running around like veritable rats? I am going to make them angry. Wait." And making a trumpet of his hands he shouted these words, whose irony he did not suspect:—
"Ay, Navagero; can we do anything for you at Genoa?"
"He doesn't understand, or pretends not to," said Madame de Chésy. "But here's something he will understand. The Prince is not looking, is he?" And boyishly she stretched her two hands from her nose with the most impertinent gesture that a pretty woman ever made to a company containing a royal highness. "Ah! the Prince saw me," she cried, with a wild laugh. "Bah! he's such a good fellow! And if he doesn't like it," and she softly tapped her eye with the ends of her fingers, "et voilà!"
When the frolicsome Parisienne began this piece of disrespectful childishness the two yachts had come abreast of each other. For a quarter of an hour they went side by side, cutting through the water, propelled only by the force of their robust lungs of steel, vomiting from their chimneys two straight, black columns, which scarcely curved in the calm air; and behind them stretched a furrow of glaucous green over the blue water, like a long and moving path of emerald fringed with silver, and on it rolled and pitched a sailboat manned by two young men, sporting in the wake of the steamers.
On this wild race the deck was yet so motionless that the water did not tremble in the vases of Venetian glass placed on the table near a group of three women. The purple and saffron petals of the large roses slowly dropped upon the table. Beside the flowers, amid their perfume, Madame de Carlsberg was sitting. She had ungloved one of her beautiful hands to caress the bloom of the flowers, and she gazed, smiling and dreamily, from the Dalilah to the luminous horizon, from her fellow-voyagers out to the vast sea, and at Hautefeuille standing, with Chésy, beside her, and turning to her incessantly. The breeze of the boat's motion revealed the slender form of the young man under his coat of navy blue and trousers of white flannel, and softly fluttered the supple red stuff of Baroness Ely's blouse and her broad tie of black mousseline de soie, matched with the large white and black squares of her skirt. The young man and the young woman both had in their eyes a feverish joy in living that harmonized with the radiance of the beautiful afternoon. How little his smile—the tender and ready smile of a lover who is loved—resembled the tired laughter that the jokes of Corancez had won from him two weeks before. And she, with the faint rose that tinged her cheeks, usually so pale, with her half-opened lips breathing in the healthful odor of the sea and the delicate perfume of the flowers, with her calm, clear brow—how little she resembled the Ely of the villa garden, defying, under the stars of the softest Southern night, the impassive beauty of nature. Seated near her loved one, how sweet nature now appeared—as sweet as the perfume of the roses that her fingers deflowered, as caressing as the soft breeze, as intoxicating as the free sky and water! How indulgent she felt for the little faults of her acquaintances, which she had condemned so bitterly the other night! For the eternal hesitations of Andryana Bonnacorsi, for the positivism of Florence Marsh, for the fast tone of Yvonne Chésy, she had now but a complacent half-smile. She forgot to be irritated at the naïve and comic importance which Chésy assumed on board the boat. In his blue yachting cap, his little body stiff and straight, he explained the reasons of the Jenny's superiority over the Dalilah and the Albatross, with the technical words he had caught from Marsh, and he gave the orders for tea:—
"Dickie is coming down as soon as we pass the other yacht," he said, and, turning to a sailor, "John, tell the chef to have everything ready in a quarter of an hour;" then addressing Madame de Carlsberg: "You are uncomfortable here, Baroness. I told Dickie that he should change his chairs. He is so careless at times. Do you notice these rugs? They are Bokharas—magnificent! He bought five at Cairo, and they would have rotted on the lower deck if I had not discovered them and had them brought here from the horrible place where he left them. You remember? And these plants on deck — that is better, is it not? But has he taken too many cocktails this morning—See how close we are passing to the Albatross! Good evening, monseigneur."
And he saluted the Grand Duke—a kind of giant, with the broad, genial face of a moujik—who applauded the triumph of the Jenny, calling out in his strong voice:—