"Oh, Florence, how can you be so uncharitable!" her mother would retort. "If you could only hear the way he speaks of his mother and his ruined life, and how he is trying to be a better man for your sake--" "Always the same old story," said Florence. "It's wonderful the good I do just sailing around and radiating moral influence. The count says I ought to get a medal from the government with my profile on one side and a composite picture of my admirers on the other! And if I do, Mamsey, I'll give it to you to keep!" Frank Rignold was sometimes tempted to curse the day that had ever brought him aboard the Minnehaha. To be a silent spectator of gaieties and festivities he could not share; to be condemned to stand aloof while he saw the woman he loved petted and sought after by men of exalted position--what could be imagined more detestable to a lover without hope, without the shadow of a claim, with nothing to look forward to except the inevitable day when a luckier fellow would carry her off before his eyes. He moped in secret and often spent hours locked in his cabin, sitting with his face in his hands, a prey to the bitterest melancholy and dejection. In public, however, he always bore himself unflinchingly, and was too proud a man and too innately a gentleman to allow his face to be read even by her. It was incumbent on him, so long as he drew her pay and wore her uniform, to act in all respects the part he was cast to play; and no one could have guessed, except perhaps the girl herself, that he had any other thought save to do his duty cheerfully and well. Captain Landry sat in the saloon at the bottom of the table, Florence herself taking the head; but the other officers of the ship had a cosey messroom of their own, presided over by Frank Rignold as the officer second in rank on board. Thus whole days might pass with no further exchange between himself and Florence than the customary good-morning when they happened to meet on deck. Except on the business of the ship it was tacitly understood that no officer should speak to her without being first addressed. The discipline of a man-of-war prevailed; everything went forward with stereotyped precision and formality; the officers were supposed to comport themselves with impassivity and self- effacement. Florence had no more need of being conscious of their presence than if they had been so many automatons. Her life and theirs offered a strange contrast. She in her little court of idlers and merry-makers; they, the grave men who were answerable for her safety, the exponents of a rigid routine, to whom the clang of the bells brought recurring duties and the exercise of their professional knowledge. To her, yachting was a play: to them, a business.