“I cannot express to you the honor you have done me in accepting my invitation,” the count exclaimed, as he bade good-bye. “This morning I was a lonesome stranger, and now I am rich in friends.”
“Who is he?” Commander Tazewell asked the consul as his straight figure passed out of sight down the road.
Mr. Lee shook his head.
“Some well connected Herzovinian of the smaller nobility, I suppose,” he replied. “His consul called upon him almost at once after he arrived on the last steamer from the South. A title carries a great deal of dignity with it.”
“He is certainly very fine looking,” Miss Lee said admiringly.
“And knows how to talk,” Phil added.
“I believe he is a past master in the art of talk,” Alice said pointedly. “And the worst of it is we know what he says and not what he means.”
All laughed at the girl’s quaint mode of expression.
“Call me silly and a rebel all you please,” she added turning upon her sister, who at once denied even the thought of any such accusation, “but I am and always will be suspicious of a Herzovinian in Kapua. Anywhere else he may be honest and mean what he says, but here, no!” She shook her head vigorously.
While the two midshipmen with Commander Tazewell were returning in the captain’s gig to the “Sitka,” Phil spoke of the sailing vessel they had seen from Alice’s “lookout.”