"Shocking!" said Miss Morris, reprovingly; "and in her very presence, too." She knitted her brows and frowned at him. "I really believe if you were in prison you would make pretty speeches to the jailer's daughter."
"Yes," said Carlton, boldly, "or even to a woman who was a prisoner herself."
"I don't know what you mean," she said, turning away from him to the others. "How far was it that Leander swam?" she asked.
The English captain pointed out two spots on either bank, and said that the shores of Abydos were a little over that distance apart.
"As far as that?" said Miss Morris. "How much he must have cared for her!" She turned to Carlton for an answer.
"I beg your pardon," he said. He was measuring the distance between the two points with his eyes.
"I said how much he must have cared for her! You wouldn't swim that far for a girl."
"For a girl!" laughed Carlton, quickly. I was just thinking I would do it for fifty dollars."
The English captain gave a hasty glance at the distance he had pointed out, and then turned to Carlton. "I'll take you," he said, seriously. "I'll bet you twenty pounds you can't do it." There was an easy laugh at Carlton's expense, but he only shook his head and smiled.
"Leave him alone, captain," said the American Secretary. "It seems to me I remember a story of Mr. Carlton's swimming out from Navesink to meet an ocean liner. It was about three miles, and the ocean was rather rough, and when they slowed up he asked them if it was raining in London when they left.
They thought he was mad."
"Is that true, Carlton?" asked the Englishman.
"Something like it," said the American, except that I didn't ask them if it was raining in London. I asked them for a drink, and it was they who were mad. They thought I was drowning, and slowed up to lower a boat, and when they found out I was just swimming around they were naturally angry.
"Well, I'm glad you didn't bet with me," said the captain, with a relieved laugh.
That evening, as the Englishman was leaving the smoking-room, and after he had bidden Carlton good-night, he turned back and said: "I didn't like to ask you before those men this morning, but there was something about your swimming adventure I wanted to know: Did you get that drink?"
I did," said Carlton--"in a bottle. They nearly broke my shoulder."
As Carlton came into the breakfast-room on the morning of the day he was to meet the Princess Aline at dinner, Miss Morris was there alone, and he sat down at the same table, opposite to her. She looked at him critically, and smiled with evident amusement.
"`To-day,'" she quoted, solemnly, "`the birthday of my life has come.'"
Carlton poured out his coffee, with a shake of his head, and frowned. "Oh, you can laugh," he said, "but I didn't sleep at all last night. I lay awake making speeches to her. I know they are going to put me between the wrong sisters," he complained, "or next to one of those old ladies-in-waiting, or whatever they are."
How are you going to begin?" said Miss Morris. "Will you tell her you have followed her from London--or from New York, rather--that you are young Lochinvar, who came out of the West, and--"
"I don't know," said Carlton, meditatively, "just how I shall begin; but I know the curtain is going to rise promptly at eight o'clock--about the time the soup comes on, I think. I don't see how she can help but be impressed a little bit. It isn't every day a man hurries around the globe on account of a girl's photograph; and she IS beautiful, isn't she?"
Miss Morris nodded her head encouragingly.
"Do you know, sometimes," said Carlton, glancing over his shoulders to see if the waiters were out of hearing, "I fancy she has noticed me. Once or twice I have turned my head in her direction without meaning to, and found her looking--well, looking my way, at least. Don't you think that is a good sign?" he asked, eagerly.
"It depends on what you call a `good sign,`" said Miss Morris, judicially. "It is a sign you're good to look at, if that's what you want. But you probably know that already, and it's nothing to your credit. It certainly isn't a sign that a person cares for you because she prefers to look at your profile rather than at what the dragomans are trying to show her."
Carlton drew himself up stiffly. "If you knew your ALICE better," he said, with severity, "you would understand that it is not polite to make personal remarks. I ask you, as my confidante, if you think she has noticed me, and you make fun of my looks! That's not the part of a confidante."
"Noticed you!" laughed Miss Morris, scornfully. "How could she help it? You are always in the way. You are at the door whenever they go out or come in, and when we are visiting mosques and palaces you are invariably looking at her instead of the tombs and things, with a wistful far-away look, as though you saw a vision. The first time you did it, after you had turned away I saw her feel to see if her hair was all right You quite embarrassed her."
"I didn't--I don't!" stammered Carlton, indignantly!" I wouldn't be so rude. Oh, I see I'll have to get another confidante; you are most unsympathetic and unkind."
But Miss Morris showed her sympathy later in the day, when Carlton needed it sorely; for the dinner towards which he had looked with such pleasurable anticipations and lover-like misgivings did not take place. The Sultan, so the equerry informed him, had, with Oriental unexpectedness, invited the Duke to dine that night at the Palace, and the Duke, much to his expressed regret, had been forced to accept what was in the nature of a command. He sent word by his equerry, however, that the dinner to Mr. Carlton was only a pleasure deferred, and that at Athens, where he understood Carlton was also going, he hoped to have the pleasure of entertaining him and making him known to his sisters.
"He is a selfish young egoist," said Carlton to Mrs. Downs.
