When he regaled some grand duke or prince regent on board his yacht, what voluptuous pride he might feel on looking at these fishermen of his own age, and saying to himself, while he smoked his cigar with the royal or imperial highness: "Thirty years ago these fishermen and I were equals. I was working just as they are. And now?" As Hautefeuille and Corancez did not figure on any page of the Almanach de Gotha, the master of the yacht did not consider it necessary to await his visitors on deck; and when the young men arrived they found no one but Miss Flossie Marsh, seated on a camp-stool before an easel, sketching in water colors. Minutely, patiently, she copied the landscape before her,--the far-off group of islands melting together like a long, dark carapace fixed on the blue bay, the hollow and supple line of the gulf, with the succession of houses among the trees, and, above all, the water of such an intense azure, dotted with white sails, and over all that other azure of the sky, clear, transparent, luminous. The industrious hand of the young girl copied this scene in forms and colors whose exactitude and hardness revealed a very small talent at the service of a very strong will. "These American women are astonishing," whispered Corancez to Hautefeuille. "Eighteen months ago she had never touched a brush. She began to work and she has made herself an artist, as she will make herself a _savante_ if she marries Verdier. They construct talents in their minds as their dentists build gold teeth in your mouth.--She sees us." "My uncle is busy at present," said the young girl, after giving them a vigorous handshake. "I tell him he should call the boat his office. As soon as we reach a port his telephone is connected with the telegraph station, and the cable begins to communicate with Marionville. Let us say good morning to him, and then I will show you the yacht. It is pretty enough, but an old model; it is at least ten years old. Mr. Marsh is having one built at Glasgow that will beat this one and a good many others. It is to measure four thousand tons. The _Jenny_ is only eighteen hundred. But here is my uncle."