So it happened that the next morning Turk was unpacking things in Mr. Quentin’s cabin and establishing relations with the bath steward.

III

PRINCE UGO

Several days out from New York found the weather fine and Lord Saxondale’s party enjoying life thoroughly.  Dickey and the capricious Lady Jane were bright or squally with charming uncertainty.  Lady Jane, Lord Bob’s sister, certainly was not in love with Mr. Savage, and he was too indolent to give his side of the case continuous thought.  Dimly he realized, and once lugubriously admitted, that he was not quite heartwhole, but he had not reached a positive understanding with himself.

“How do they steer the ship at night when it is so cloudy they can’t see the north star?” she asked, as they leaned over the rail one afternoon.  Her pretty face was very serious, and there was a philosophical pucker on her brow.

“With a rudder,” he answered, laconically.

“How very odd!” she said, with a malicious gleam in her eyes.  “You are as wonderfully well-informed concerning the sea as you are on all other subjects.  How good it must seem to be so awfully intelligent.”

“It isn’t often that I find anyone who asks really intelligent questions, you know, Lady Jane.  Your profound quest for knowledge forced my dormant intellect into action, and I remembered that a ship invariably has a rudder or something like that.”

“I see it requires the weightiest of questions to arouse your intellect.”  The wind was blowing the stray hairs ruthlessly across her face and she looked very, very pretty.

“Intellects are so very common nowadays that ’most anything will arouse them.  Quentin says his man Turk has a brain, and if Turk has a brain I don’t see how the rest of us can escape.  I’d like to be a porpoise.”

“What an ambition!  Why not a whale or a, shark?”

“If I were a shark you’d be afraid of me, and if I were a whale I could not begin to get into your heart.”

“That’s the best thing you’ve said since you were seasick,” she said, sweetly.

“I’m glad you didn’t hear what I said when I was seasick.”

“Oh!  I’ve heard brother Bob say things,” loftily.

“But nobody can say things quite so impressively as an American.”

“Pooh!  You boasting Americans think you can do everything better than others.  Now you claim that you can swear better.  I won’t listen to you,” and off she went toward the companionway.  Dickey looked mildly surprised, but did not follow.  Instead, he joined Lady Saxondale and Quentin in a stroll.

Four days later they were comfortably established with Saxondale in London.  That night Quentin met, for the first time, the reigning society sensation, Prince Ugo Ravorelli, and his countrymen, Count Sallaconi and the Duke of Laselli.  All London had gone mad over the prince.