as used to being
noticed by ladies in his vicinity. He made up his mind that he would
make that girl look at him. He intended to lay siege to Miss Watts, but
he came upon Isabelle unattended, in deep contemplation of the sea, and
he promptly sat down beside her.

"I beg pardon, Miss Bryce, but are you Irish?" he said deliberately.

She turned big, enquiring eyes upon him.

"No. Why?"

"I thought nobody could be as sad as you look except an Irishman."

"I'm not Irish," she said, and returned her gaze to the sea.

"I am," he exclaimed.

No answer.

"We're very sensitive to--to rebuffs."

"I suppose so. You were shot in a rebuff, weren't you?" she said,
politely.

His laugh rang out at that.

"Yes, but we're not so sensitive to a rebuff from guns as we are to a
rebuff from ladies."

"No?"

"Have ye taken an unconquerable dislike to me, Miss Bryce?" he begged.

"I think you're very--pleasant," admitted Isabelle.

"Couldn't ye take a lesson from me?"

"You think I'm unpleasant?"

"I think your heart is as hard as the rocks in Flodden Field," he
exclaimed.

"Being pleasant hasn't anything to do with your heart," was her calm
reply.

"Hasn't it? Ye think I can be as pleasant as I am, and still have a
hard, black heart?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"So you don't like me?" he persisted.

"Yes, rather. But I'm a little tired of heroes just now," was her reply.

"I'm afraid I don't qualify," he said curtly, "but as a possible
nuisance I'll take mesilf off."

He rose. He stopped behind her chair and leaned over her to say:

"That rebuff, ye spoke of, in France. After all, it was an amateur
affair, as rebuffs go."

With which he marched off down the deck, his head very high in the air.
Miss Watts sat down beside Isabelle with a quick glance at her.

"Weren't you talking to Captain O'Leary?"

"He talked to me."

"Isn't he charming? All the women are so excited about him."

"That's what's the matter with him."

"Is he conceited?"

"Fearfully!" quoth Isabelle.

She went over that interview dozens of times. Of course he would never
look at her again. She remembered how Mrs. Darlington purred over
him--how Madam Van Dyke patted him. That was the way to make him like
you, but she had scratched and spit at him, like an angry kitten. She
couldn't imagine why she had acted like that. She admired him immensely.
He was more attractive than Jerry Paxton or Sidney Cartel or any man she
had ever lo