Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/142

 "We might as well," Macklyn assented. "He'll probably treat us like a couple of outcasts; but we may as well try it out. Anyhow, he can't stop us from looking at her. I think you're an adroit person, by the way, Jones."

"Why?"

"To reason it out why such a woman wouldn't smoke on deck if she cared to. Ogle prides himself on being an analyst—you can tell he does from his play—but I doubt very much if he'd have been able to fathom a delicate bit like that from merely seeing Mme. Momoro bound for the upper deck. I'm sure he'd never have guessed it."

By coincidence, Ogle was just then guessing in a directly opposite direction, and not at all to his own pleasure, though he followed Mme. Momoro with alacrity. As a matter of fact, she had offered him precisely the explanation diagnosed by the astute Mr. Jones—she wished a cigarette, and perhaps some of the American ladies would not be pleased to see a woman smoke on the open deck, though she had herself observed young American and English girls thus freely disporting themselves. But Ogle, in spite of himself, could not avoid an uneasy suspicion that she had become curious to know what the man Tinker