The poor imbecile did not pause to inquire how she had found that out but cried eagerly:
"But surely that would be enough. It would not be what we have been accustomed to, but with love at the helm, surely we could steer our little craft!"
She laughed aloud lightly, but still not without a certain fascination.
"Oh, Dudley!" she exclaimed, "you are not a nineteenth-century boy at all. You belong to mediæval times, and have been born at least a hundred years too late. Come and let us go back to the others. This yacht is pitching dreadfully. We have quite a sea on, and I am not the best sailor that ever lived, by any means. Oh, I say, come off! You are a magnificent Knight of the Doleful Countenance. Do you want to give away to all those people the nonsense you have been saying to me? Now smile and look happy, like a good boy. Just try to imagine that I have made you every promise you can possibly desire. Who knows but that I may, some day?"
He took heart from her chaff and returned with her to the others, because he felt that he could persuade her to remain no longer.
Leith, Colonel Washburn and Mrs. Chalmers were carrying on a heated discussion, while Carlita sat apart at a table looking listlessly through a book of engravings, not a subject of which could she have told a moment later.
"Do you think we are going down?" asked Jessica, lightly, as she joined them. "It would be too disastrous a termination to our charming day."
"Not much danger, I fancy," replied Leith; "though it has grown too rough to be pleasant. It is rather tempting the fates to venture out at this season."
"Oh, but how perfect the day has been!"