“C. Q.”; or, In the Wireless House
trying to mix him up just for fun! Just for fun! She would n’t try any such fun again,—at any rate not with him! He had done with her. That was clear enough, and he had not come down into the saloon to a single meal since she had so foolishly tried to make him think that Chilvers was Cosmo Graeme. What a wild stroke that had been! The worst ever! And now more than likely Ponsonby had a sneaking suspicion that Cosmo was a crook too—traveling as he was under an assumed name. How lame had been her attempted explanation to the effect that he was in fact a student of practical sociology! She felt hot with disgust at the thought of it. The whole thing had been too absurd! There she had been striving and lying to divert attention from Cosmo when all the time the Captain had been looking for an entirely different person,—a miserable, consumptive drudge of a clerk, whom she afterwards had been compelled to identify as Chilvers in order to prevent the Captain from arresting Cosmo. What a mixed-up performance it had turned out to be! And yet, after all, what a natural mistake it had been on her part.
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