"Don't give yourself away. The London season is in summer."

"You don't say! Well, in England, then. Why didn't you write me?"

"I'm not running a correspondence-school or news agency, Mr. Brice-
Ashton."

"Oh, cut it, Dodie! Post me up, that's a good girl! What I've heard
has been so muddled. This hero business, for a starter--what about it?
I thought it was an English duke that chartered the steamer to rescue
Genevieve."

"No, only the son of a duke,--James Scarbridge, the Right Honorable
the Earl of Avondale."

"My ante!"

"It's in the jack-pot, and as good as lost. What chance have you now
to win Genevieve,--with a real earl and a real hero in the field?"

"Earl _and_ hero? I thought he was the hero."

"That's one of the jokes on mamma. Earl Jimmy had nothing to do with
the rescue ships that Uncle Herbert cabled to search the Mozambique
coast. No; Jeems chartered a tramp steamer on his own account, to look
for friend Tommy. He found the heroic Thomas and, incidentally, the
fair Genevieve--who wasn't so _very_ fair after weeks of broiling
in that East African sun."

"It's wonderful--wonderful! To think that she alone of all aboard her