sh, romantic fancy, of course--a spoilt child,
crying for the moon, because it's the one thing that no adoring person
can get for her. I shouldn't worry about it much, if I were you. Indeed,
perhaps she sees herself that she is not very wise, and wants to forget.
Now she has set her heart on a yachting trip; but you must not speak of
it to her or the others, for she asked me not to tell."

"She gives me little enough chance to speak of anything. A short time ago
she would not have cared for a yachting trip, unless I were to be of the
party. Now, I suppose, her wish is to be rid of me."

"Her wish is also to be rid of me."

"You are not to go?"

"Not if Virginia can make a decent excuse to leave me behind."

"Who, then, goes with her?"

"Her half-brother, and Sir Roger Broom. She isn't even going to take a
maid."

"Heavens! It is Sir Roger Broom, then, who will win her!"

"I don't know what to think. She has refused him; he is many years older
than she, and she has known him since she was a child, for Sir Roger went
often to America while her father--his cousin--was alive. Why should she
suddenly make up her mind to marry him? He was her guardian during her
minority, or what remained of it after her father's death; now she has
had her one-and-twentieth birthday, and is her own mistress. I fancied
that she intended to remain so for a time, unless she lost her head--or
her heart--and Sir Roger, nice as he is, is scarcely the man to make a
girl like Virginia Beverly do either. Still, I don't understand the
yachting trip. It is in every way mysterious; and since you have asked my
advice, it is this: find out where they are going, and appear there, as
if by chance. By that time our spoiled beauty's mind may have changed."

"Won't you tell me where they are going?"

"I would if I could." This was true, since Kate was sure that, change as
Virginia might, she would never return to her brief, ballroom fancy for
the Italian. "I hinted at Naples, Greece, and Egypt, and Virginia
answered that it would be 'something of the sort'--answered evasively,
saying nothing was decided yet; and so the conversation would have ended
if George Trent hadn't come bursting in, very excited, exclaiming before
he saw me that he'd got hold of exactly the right steam yacht, with _four
cannon_."

Loria started like a sensitive woman. "A yacht with four cannon! What can
they want with cannon?"

"I asked if they were fitting out for pirates,