"Next year I'll build another that will beat you!"
"Do you know I was frightened," said Chésy to Marsh, who, according to his promise, had descended from the bridge; "we just grazed the Albatross!"
"I was very sure of the boat," Marsh continued; "but I should not have done it with Bohun. You saw how far I kept away from him. He would have cut our yacht in two. When the English see themselves about to be beaten, their pride makes them crazy, and they are capable of anything."
"That is just what they say of the Americans," gayly replied Yvonne de Chésy.
The pretty Parisienne was probably the only person in the world that the master of the Jenny would have permitted such a pleasantry. But Corancez had been right in what he said to Hautefeuille—when the malicious Vicomtesse was speaking Marsh could see his daughter. So he did not take offence at this epigram against his country, susceptible as he usually was to any denial that in everything America "beat the Old World."
"You are attacking my poor compatriots again," he said simply. "That is very ungrateful. All of them that I know are in love with you."
"Come, Commodore," replied the young woman; "don't try the madrigal. It is not your specialty. But lead us down to tea, which ought to be served, should it not, Gontran?"
"They are astonishing," Miss Marsh whispered, when her uncle and the Chésys had started toward the stairway that led to the salon. "They act as though they were at home."
"Don't be jealous," said Madame Bonnacorsi. "They will be so useful to us at Genoa in occupying the terrible uncle."
"If it were only she," Florence replied; "she is amusing and such a good girl. But he—I don't know if it is the blood of a daughter of the great Republic, but I can't endure a nobleman who has a way of being insolent in the rôle of a parasite and domestic."