To her, yachting was a
play: to them, a business.
"I often remark your chief engineer," said the comte de Souvary to
Florence. "A handsome man, with an air at once sad and noble--one
of zoze extraordinary Americans who keep for their machines the
ardour we Europeans lavish on the women we love--and whose spirits
when zey die turn without doubt into petrole or electricity."
"I have known Mr. Rignold ever since I was a child," said
Florence, pleased to hear Frank praised. "I regard him as one of
my best and dearest friends."
"The more to his credit," said the count, astonished. "Many in
such a galere would prove themselves presumptuous and
troublesome."
"He is almost too much the other way," said Florence, with a sigh.
"Ah, that appeals to me!" said the count. "I should be such
anozzer in his place. Proud, silent, unobtrusive, who gives
dignity to what otherwise would be a false position."
"I came very near being his wife once," said Florence, impelled,
she hardly knew why, to make the confession.
The count was thunderstruck.
"His wife!" he exclaimed.
"Before I was rich, you know," explained Florence. "A million
years ago it seems now, when I lived in a little town and was a
nobody."
"Anozzer romance of the Far Vest!" cried the count, to whom this
term embraced the entire continent from Maine to San Francisco.
Florence was curiously capricious in her treatment of Frank
Rignold. Often she would neglect him for weeks together, and then,
in a sort of revulsion, would go almost to the other extreme.
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