But this to the count seemed only the more remarkable.  He raised the fabric of a fresh romance on the instant, especially (on Florence telling him more about her forebears) when he began to mix up the Pilgrim Fathers, the Revolutionary War, and the Alabama in one brisk panorama of his ever dear “Far Vest”!

Florence’s acquaintance with the comte de Souvary went back to Majorca, where, in the course of one of those sudden blows, so common on the Mediterranean, their respective yachts had fled for shelter.  His own was a large auxiliary schooner called the Paquita, a lofty, showy vessel which he sailed himself with his usual courage and audacity.  He had the reputation of scaring his unhappy guests—­when any were bold enough to accept his invitations—­to within the proverbial inch of their lives; and they usually changed “ze sensation” for the nearest mail-boat home.  Florence and he had struck up a warm friendship from the start, and for the whole summer their vessels were inseparable, sailing everywhere in company and anchoring side by side.

The count had a way of courtship peculiarly his own.  He made it apparent from the first how deeply he had been stirred by Florence’s beauty and how ready he was to offer her his hand; but as a matter of fact he never did so in set terms, and treated her more as a comrade than a divinity.  He talked of his own devotion to her as something detached and impersonal, willing as much as she to laugh over it and treat it lightly.  He was never jealous, never exacting, and seemed to be as happy to share her with others as when he had her all alone in one of their tete-a-tetes.  What he coveted most of all was her intimacy, her confidence, the frank expression of her own true self; and in this exchange he was willing to give as much as he received and often more.  Sometimes she was piqued at his apparent indifference—­at his lack of any stronger feeling for her—­seeming to detect in him something of her own insouciance and coldness.

“You really don’t care for me a bit,” she said once.  “I am only another form of ’ze sensation’—­like going up in a balloon or riding on the cow-catcher.”

“I keep myself well in hand,” he returned.  “I am not approaching the terrible age of forty without knowing a little at least about women and their ways.”

“A little!” she exclaimed ironically.  “You know enough to write a book!”

“Zat book has taught me to go very slow,” he said.  “Were I in my young manhood I’d come zoop, like that, and carry you off in ze Far Vest style.  But I can never hope to be that again with any woman; my decreasing hair forbids, if nozing else—­but my way is to make myself indispensable—­ze old dog, ze old standby, as you Americans say—­the good old harbour to which you will come at last when tired of ze storms outside!”

“Your humility is a new trait,” said Florence.

“It’s none ze less real because it is often hid,” said the count.  “I watch you very closely, more closely than perhaps you even think.  You have all the heartlessness of youth and health and beauty.  I would be wrong to put my one little piece of money on the table and lose all; and so I save and save, and play ze only game that offers me the least chance—­ze waiting game!”