For all that, a sinking feeling lurked around the pit of her stomach. “This,” she was thinking, quite against her will, “is but the beginning. Miss LeMar has many friends and more admirers. Not all of these will be as smiling and as kind as this Jerry.
“Oh, well,” she reassured herself, “Florence shall be my bodyguard. She’ll throw them from the window.” She smiled a merry smile.
But Florence was working. Long hours every day she was on the Enchanted Island. And just there came the blow to Jeanne’s plans.
CHAPTER XI
FROM CHINA’S ANCIENT TREASURE
While Jeanne was making the rather disturbing discovery that when you take over a double’s labors you take over her friends as well, Florence was listening to words that, now thrilling her to the very depths of her soul, and now slowing up her heart until her very blood ran cold, left her at last full of half-formed hopes and well established fears.
Every afternoon from four o’clock to six, she was given a rest from her duties on the Enchanted Island. During these periods of leisure she wandered through the grounds. The wonders of science and invention that were spread out before her never failed to hold her interest. For all this, she took pleasure at times in visiting the more bizarre attractions. To watch the Seminole Indians dive beneath a great alligator with his snapping jaws and thrashing tail, to watch the little brown man’s conquest of the scaly monster, gave her a thrill. To study the quaint customs of men from the heart of Africa; to don a bathing suit and take a long, long slide into the blue waters, all these things held a charm for this sturdy, adventure-loving girl.
This day she had entered the Golden Temple of Jehol to study its varied treasures from the heart of China. These things charmed and fascinated her.
The place was crowded. With such a throng pushing through its narrow aisles, the temple had lost much of its charm. She was about to wander once more into the open air, when her attention was caught and held by a face.
To her own astonishment, she stood there and stared at the man until he turned and smiled at her. Then she felt ashamed.
“Want a book?”