“Were your friends waiting for you, or had they gone?”
“Oh, no. I told them I had been detained. It happened not to be necessary to enter into details, so I was saved the task of explanation, and, besides, we had other interesting things to discuss. This function on the cruiser has loomed so large as a topic of conversation that there has been little need of any other subject to talk about for several days past.”
“I suppose you must have attended many grander occasions than this. Although we have endeavored to make a display, and although we possess a reasonably efficient band, still, a cruiser is not exactly designed for the use to which it is being put to-night. We have many disadvantages to overcome which are not met with in the sumptuous dwellings of New York and Bar Harbor.”
The girl’s eyes were on the deck for some moments before she replied, then she looked across at the dancers, and finally said:
“I think the ball on the ‘Consternation’ quite equals anything I have ever attended.”
“It is nice of you to say that. Praise from--I won’t name Sir Hubert Stanley--but rather Lady Hubert Stanley--is praise, indeed. And now, Miss Amhurst, since I have confessed my fruitless wanderings through Bar Harbor, may I not have the pleasure of calling upon you to-morrow or next day?”
Her eyes were dreamily watching the dancers.
“I suppose,” she said slowly, with the flicker of a smile curving those enticing lips, “that since you were so very friendly with Captain Kempt to-night he may expect you to smoke a cigar with him, and it will possibly happen that Katherine and I, who are very fond of the Captain, may chance to come in while you are there.”
“Katherine? Ah, Katherine is the name of the young lady who was with you here--Miss Kempt?”
“You are stopping with the Kempts, then?”
“I wonder if they’d think I was taking a liberty if I brought Jack Lamont with me?”
“The Prince?” laughed Dorothy. “Is he a real prince?”
“Oh, yes, there’s no doubt about that. I shouldn’t have taken the liberty of introducing him to you as Prince Lermontoff if he were not, as we say in Scotland, a real Mackay--the genuine article. Well, then, the Prince and I will pay our respects to Captain Kempt to-morrow afternoon.”