“I shall not do this again, Melanie dear, till you give me leave.  But I have no mind to let you go, either.  You and Madame Reynier are going on a cruise with me; will you?  Get your maid to pack your grip.  It will be better for you than the ‘professional advice’ which you came to New York for.”

Aleck stopped suddenly, his practical sense coming to the surface.  “Heavens!  You haven’t had any lunch, and it’s all times of the day!” He rang the bell, begged the maid to fetch bread and butter and tea and to ask Madame Reynier to come to the drawing-room.  When she appeared, he met her with a grave, but in no wise a cowed, spirit.

“Madame Reynier, your niece refuses, for the present, to consider herself engaged to me; I, however, am unequivocally betrothed to her.  And I shall be endlessly grateful if you and Miss Reynier will be my guests on the Sea Gull for as long a time as you find it diverting.  We shall cruise along the coast and put into harbor at night, if it seems best; and I’ll try to make you comfortable.  Will you come?”

Madame Reynier was willing if Melanie was; and Melanie had no strength, if she had the will, to combat Aleck’s masterful ways.  It was soon settled.  Aleck swung off down the street, re-reading Jim’s letter, intent only on the Sea Gull and the preparations for his guests.  But at the back of his mind he was thinking, “Poor girl!  She needs me more than I thought!”

CHAPTER VI

ON BOARD THE JEANNE D’ARC

If hard usage and obstacles could cure a knight-errant of his sentiment, then Jimmy Hambleton had been free of his passion for the Face.  His plunge overboard had been followed by a joyous swim, a lusty call to the yacht for “Help,” and a growing amazement when he realized that it was the yacht’s intention to pass him by.  He had swum valiantly, determined to get picked up by that particular craft, when suddenly his strength failed.  He remembered thinking that it was all up with him, and then he lost consciousness.

When he awoke he was on a hard bunk in a dim place, and a sailor was jerking him about.  His throat burned with a fiery liquid.  Then he felt the plunging and rising of the boat, and came to life sufficiently to utter the stereotyped words, “Where am I?”

In Jim’s case the question did not imply the confused groping back to sense that it usually indicates, but rather an actual desire to know whether or not he was on board the Jeanne D’Arc.  Plainly his wits had not been badly shattered by his experience overboard.  But the sailor who was attending him with such ministrations as he understood, answered him with a sample of French which Jim had never met with in his school-books, and he was not enlightened for some hours.