“You might have had torches,” said Dorothy. “My friend forgets she was wishing the sailors held torches on that suspended stairway up the ship’s side.”
“I meant electric torches—Edison torches, of course.”
Katherine was displeased at the outlook. She was extremely fond of dancing, and here this complacent young man had planted himself down on a camp stool to talk of electricity.
“Miss Kempt, I am sorry that you are disappointed at our display. Your slight upon British electrical engineering leaves us unscathed, because this has been done by a foreign mechanic, whom I wish to present to you.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Katherine, rather in the usual tone of her elder sister. “I don’t dance with mechanics, thank you.”
She emphasized the light fantastic word, but the Lieutenant did not take the hint; he merely laughed again in an exasperatingly good-natured way, and said:
“Lady Angela is going to be Jack Lamont’s partner for the next waltz.”
“Oh,” said Katherine loftily, “Lady Angela may dance with any blacksmith that pleases her, but I don’t. I’m taking it for granted that Jack Lamont is your electrical tinsmith.”
“Yes, he is, and I think him by all odds the finest fellow aboard this ship. It’s quite likely you have read about his sister. She is a year older than Jack, very beautiful, cultured, everything that a grande dame should be, yet she has given away her huge estate to the peasantry, and works with them in the fields, living as they do, and faring as they do. There was an article about her in one of the French reviews not long ago. She is called the Princess Natalia.”
“The Princess Natalia!” echoed Katherine, turning her face toward the young man. “How can Princess Natalia be a sister of Jack Lamont? Did she marry some old prince, and take to the fields in disgust?”