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"You can all call him Alb," said Starr. "We shall probably never have the pleasure of knowing him on land, so why stumble over Dutch names or titles? He has come on board 'Lorelei' to be our skipper, hasn't he? So he would probably prefer to be called 'Skipper." Starr leaned down to pat Tibe, shaking all over. "Ha, ha, ha!" he gasped.
"My DEAR! Why, my DEAR! He hasn't a CENT. Of course you're quite confused now you've been through a lot, and you think he's the only man in the world but it's impossible. It's absurd. The marriage was only a form. You're no more his wife in the sight of God than " "Let's not talk about God," cried Lorelei. "That ceremony was scarcely legal, not to speak of religion or decency."
Lorelei was not a little mystified by Merkle's cryptic message, for she could imagine no possible way in which she or the writer himself could be connected discreditably with Jarvis Hammon's affair. She gained some light, however, when that evening she read the note to Lilas. "Why, they're going to blackmail Merkle, too," Lilas exclaimed. "Well, they'd be foolish to let him off, wouldn't they?
Beside him were his high hat, his gloves, and his stick. As Lorelei, with skirts carefully gathered, tiptoed past him she saw suspended upon his gleaming white shirt-bosom what at first glance resembled a foreign decoration of some sort, but proved to be Mr. Regan's false teeth.
She looked as if she would have liked to throw it overboard. "As you say," she said, "it is a little difficult to make up one's mind. Don't you think those rocks to the right may be the Lorelei? I must go and tell Mrs. Malt. She won't be fit to travel with for a week if she misses the Lorelei." And Miss Callis left me to reflect upon the inconsistencies of my sex.
His appearance as he faced Lorelei was prepossessing, and she breathed a thanksgiving as she took his arm. Hammon clapped the other gentleman upon the shoulder, crying: "The rail market will take care of itself until to-morrow, Hannibal. What is more to the point, I saw your supper partner flirting with 'Handsome Dan' Avery. Better find her quick."
"We asked him for a hundred thousand dollars and got it." Lorelei gasped. "He bellowed like a bull, he spat poison like a cobra, he writhed like a bucket of eels, but we put it over." "A hundred thousand dollars!" whispered the wife. "To a penny. And it's in the bank to your credit. But I didn't stop there." Bob's voice hardened.
"My boat! My boat!" she repeated, lingering over the words as if they had been cream and sugar. "Oh, I wonder if it knows it's My Boat? I wish it could. I should like it to get fond of me. I know it's alive. Feel its heart beat. What Tibe is to Lady MacNairne, 'Lorelei' is going to be to me. We never lived before, did we, Phil? And aren't you glad we came?
The climax of these annoyances came one night after a party at which Lorelei had been presented to an old friend of Miss Lynn's. Lilas had introduced the man as one of her girlhood chums, and Lorelei had tried to be nice to him; then in some way he arranged to take her home. The memory of that ride was a horror.
And I hadn't come to this girl's record. The report was made by one of our own men, and it's incomplete, but I can have it elaborated. What do you say, MRS. WHARTON? Is it true?" Lorelei dropped her head. "Most of it, I dare say." "Did you try to blackmail Merkle?" "No." "Your mother and your brother did." She was silent. "They tried to scare him into marrying you, did they not?"
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