"It's in the jack-pot, and as good as lost. What chance have you now to win Genevieve,—with a real earl and a real hero in the field?"
"Earl and hero? I thought he was the hero."
"That's one of the jokes on mamma. Earl Jimmy had nothing to do with the rescue ships that Uncle Herbert cabled to search the Mozambique coast. No; Jeems chartered a tramp steamer on his own account, to look for friend Tommy. He found the heroic Thomas and, incidentally, the fair Genevieve—who wasn't so very fair after weeks of broiling in that East African sun."
"It's wonderful—wonderful! To think that she alone of all aboard her steamer should have survived shipwreck on that savage coast!"
"She didn't survive alone—she couldn't have. That's where Tommy came in. There was another man, but he didn't count for much, I guess. Vievie merely wrote that he died during the second cyclone."
"What an experience!—and for a girl like Genevieve!"
"She, of all girls!" chimed in Dolores enviously. "You remember she never went in for sports of any kind, not even riding. And for her to be flung out that way into the tropical jungles, among lions and crocodiles and snakes and things! Why can't I ever have romantic adventures?"
"You wouldn't give the man a chance to prove himself a hero," objected
Ashton. "You'd shoot the lions yourself."
"I am good at archery. A bow and arrows, you know, were all that Mr.
Blake had."
"Blake?" repeated Ashton in rather a peculiar tone.