"Why not?"
"The _Andromeda_ after-deck is much more comfortable than anything to
be found ashore in this corner of Nicaragua."
"You have been here before?"
"Yes; I came around here once, something over a year ago, on a steamer
from Belize. We made a stop of a few hours and I was besotted enough
to leave the ship. I shan't make any such mistake again."
"Gracias á Dios," she said musingly. "I wonder who said it first--and
why he was thanking God--particularly?"
I laughed. "Some storm-tossed mariner of the early centuries, I
imagine, who was glad enough to make a landfall of any sort."
"Storm-tossed," she repeated. "Aren't we all more or less storm-tossed,
Richard?"
"I suppose we are, either mentally, morally, or physically. It's a sad
enough world, if you want to take that angle."
"But I don't want to take that angle. When I do take it, it's because I
have to."
Being as much of a hypocrite as any of those whom Van Dyck had proposed
putting under his analytical microscope, I said: "But there are no
constraining influences at work upon any of us aboard this beautiful
little pleasure ship--there can't be."
"Do you think not?" she threw in; and then, without warning: "How about
you and Conetta, Richard?"
In common justice to Conetta I had to feign an indifference I was far
from feeling--which was more of the hypocrisy.
"That was all over and done with three years ago, as you must know,
Madeleine. She wasn't aware of the fact that I was to be in the
_Andromeda_ party; and I didn't know she was to be--at least, not
until after I had committed myself to Bonteck. Of course we promptly
quarreled the moment we met. Perhaps you may have noticed that we've
been quarreling ever since."
She smiled soberly.
"You have made it obvious--both of you; perhaps a little too obvious."
Then, after a momentary silence: "Did Miss Mehitable give the real
reason for that other and mortal quarrel, three years ago, Richard?"
"The reason she gave was enough, wasn't it?"
"Some of us thought it wasn't. I don't know how you were acting, but
Conetta didn't give a very good imitation of a person who has 'agreed
to disagree.'"
"I can fill out the picture for you," I said grimly. "I was acting like
a man who had been fool enough to lose his temper at the invitation
of a crabbed and rather spiteful person who was old enough to be his
mother."
"Ah!" she said; "I thought it was Miss Mehitable." Then: "Was it
because you had lost your money?"
"Yes," I said, merely because the simple affirmative seemed to afford
the easiest way of brushing aside explanations which might not explain.
It was then that Miss Madeleine Barclay became a plagiarist, stealing
the very words uttered so hotly by Edie Van Tromp only a few hours
earlier.
"Money--always money! I _hate_ it, Dick Preble!"