These and other winged words were lost upon Cécile. She was trying to hit on some solution of Applebo's treatment of herself. Certainly there had been some hidden meaning in the looks which he had turned upon her; something which suggested a motive for his peculiar behaviour. Cécile, who found it quite impossible to construe any situation as unflattering to herself, decided that the behaviour of the poet was nothing less than sheer "bluff." Either he was trying to disguise some deep, inner emotion, or else he had wished to mislead Captain Bell as to the true reason for his constant attendance. Cécile did not for an instant take seriously Applebo's sentimental effusions about the effect upon his poetry produced by the propinquity of the _Shark_. She was quite convinced that there was a very deep and subtle method underlying his apparently foolish pose. Heretofore she had been divided as to whether he must be considered as a really smitten lover or merely as a sort of half-witted loon, which, like all of its species, was quite at home on the wave. She had even thought it possible that he might be a fool of whimsical ideas who had actually attached himself to the _Shark_ from sheer lacking objective. This theory had been overturned by Wood's revelations, and she had accompanied her father to call on Applebo with the secret determination of discovering what was really underneath his eccentric behaviour. The sleepy quick-wittedness; the supine manner of attempting to disguise a fierce forcefulness beneath; the deep, resonant voice, silky and warm; the inscrutable, leonine face with its mane of tawny hair; the _tout ensemble_, had deeply impressed Cécile, though she was not yet conscious of how deeply. But she knew that Applebo was very far from being the pilot-fish which he claimed to be. A chunk of pork on a hook, perhaps, but a pilot-fish ... no! Cécile had a vague instinct that she was shortly to be more fully informed in the matter. Notwithstanding which, she arrived at the schooner in a state of extreme irritation, while her father had subsided into a sub-acute exasperation expressed by grunts and growls. A certain curiosity had backed up the real motive for the call aboard the _Daffodil_, and this curiosity had been politely but effectually flouted, and both father and daughter much resented it. Especially the daughter, as much trifling with the affections of many young men is a poor way for a girl to get in training to have a young man treat her with _lèse majesté_.