"It was a downright confidence trick," she burst out to the comte de Souvary, firing up afresh with the memory of her wrongs. "I loved my launch. It was a beauty. It never went dotty at the time you needed it most and it was a vertical inverted triple-expansion direct-acting propeller!' (Florence could always rattle off technical details and showed her Americanism in her catalogue-like fluency in this respect.) "And I miss it and I want it back, and the horrid old woman never means to pay me a penny!" "Oh, my child!" said the count, "she never pays anybody ze penny. She is a stone from which one looks in vain for blood. Your launch is--what do you call it in ze Far Vest--a goner!" "But she's descended from Charlemagne," cried Florence. "She has the entree to all the courts. She ought to be exposed for stealing my boat!" "What does anybody do when he is robbed?" said the count philosophically. He could afford to be philosophical: it wasn't HIS vertical inverted triple-expansion direct-acting propeller. "Smile and be more careful ze next time," he went on. "The marquise's reputation is international for what is charitably called her eccentricity." "In America they put people in jail for that kind of eccentricity!" exclaimed Florence. "Oh, the best way in Europe is money-with-order," said the count, "what I remember once a friend seeing in that great country of which you are ze ornament--in God we trust: all others cash!" "Well, it's a shame," said Florence, "and if I ever get the chance of a dark night I'll ram her with the Minnehaha!" Florence's mother, a dear little old lady who did tatting and read the Christian Herald, was always the particular target of the fortune-hunters who pursued her daughter. It seemed such a brilliant idea to capture the mother first as the preparatory step of getting into the good graces of the heiress; and the old lady, who was one of the most guileless of her sex, never failed to fall into the trap and take the attentions all in earnest. Comte de Souvary used to say that if you wished to find the wickedest men in Europe you had only to cast your eyes in the direction of Florence's mother; and she would be trotted off to church and driven in automobiles and lunched in casinos by the most notorious and unprincipled scapegraces of the Old World. Florence, who, like all heiresses, had developed a positive instinct for the men who meant her mischief, was always delighted at the repeated captures of the old lady; and it was an endless entertainment to her when her mother was induced to champion the cause of some aristocratic ne'er-do-well. "But, Mamma," she would say, "I hate to call your friends names, but really he's a perfect scamp, and underneath all his fine manners he is no better than a wolf ravening for rich young lambs!"