any longer"; and had a quarrel and a making up with a reigning
duke about a lighter of coal that their respective crews had come
to blows over. Everybody adored her, and she seldom put to sea
without a love-sick yacht in her wake.

Of course, here as elsewhere, every phase of human character was
displayed, and most conspicuous of all amongst the evil was the
determination of many to win Florence's millions for themselves.
Amid that noble concourse of vessels, every one of which stood for
a princely income, there were adventurers as needy and as hungry
as any sharper in the streets of New York. There is an
aristocratic poverty, none the less real because three noughts
must be added to all the figures, that first surprised and then
disgusted the pretty American. Her first awakening to the fact was
when, as a special favour, she sold her best steam launch to a
French marquise at the price it had cost her. Though that lady was
very profuse with little pink notes and could purr over Florence
by the hour, her signature on a cheque was never forthcoming, and
our heroine had a fit of fury to think of having been so deceived.

"It was a downright confidence trick," she burst out to the comte
de Souvary, firing up afresh with the memory of her wrongs. "I
loved my launch. It was a beauty. It never went dotty at the time
you needed it most and it was a vertical inverted triple-expansion
direct-acting propeller!' (Florence could always rattle off
technical details and showed her Americanism in her catalogue-like
fluency in this respect.) "And I miss it and I want it back, and
the horrid old woman never means to pay me a penny!"

"Oh, my child!" said the count, "she never pays anybody ze penny.