"Miss," said Popple, "you'll believe me, I know, when I say I didn't reckernize you upstairs. Sink me! I couldn't imagine that any young lady could look so pretty in two different ways."
She laughed delightedly, for the first time since the doleful twin sisters, Sorrow and Suffering, had discovered her. "Now I understand why a sailor has a lass in every port," she said. "You cannot fail to be a success with the girls if you talk to them in that fashion."
Popple had never before been accused of being a ladykiller. He grinned, and his red face grew purple. "Me, Miss?" he cried. "Bless your little heart! I was on'y tellin' the solemn truth. You looked like a seafarin' angel when I saw you through the scud an' spray dashin' over that reef. An' now--well, if the folk hereabout want to advertise Pont Aven, they ought to put you on a poster."
"Captain, I must not have my head turned by such compliments. Wait till Tuesday, our market day, and you will meet dozens of girls who put me in the shade. Is your arm fairly comfortable, Mr. Raymond?"
The secretary, whose eyes had glowered on every unstudied poise and trick of expression that stamped Yvonne as Mrs. Carmac's daughter, even to a markedly clear enunciation, and an almost coquettish sidelong glance when specially amused, had been given time to collect his faculties by Popple's tribute of admiration.
"Yes, thank you, Miss Ingersoll," he said, striving to tune his harsh voice to a note of reverential courtesy. "If I possessed Captain Popple's gift of speech, I should try to vie with him in imagery. May I say that I have always considered Mrs. Carmac as one of the most strikingly handsome women I have ever seen, so I can well appreciate the fact that you are her niece?"
"Lorry," cried the smiling girl, "come out here and tell these flatterers how horrid I can be at times!"
Raymond turned so quickly that he wrenched his arm slightly, and was hard put to it to suppress a groan. Tollemache was standing at the open window directly behind the seat that Popple and himself had occupied. How long had he been there? What had he heard? Certainly the path of the evildoer was not being made smooth, and the scheming secretary had experienced various thrills in the course of one short hour.