CHAPTER FOURThe sea had subsided and the sun was shining brightly.
The roughness and turmoil of the Bay of Biscay was almost forgotten.
Princess Sydella stretched out her legs in the place that Lord Victor had found her on the windward side of the Battleship.
“Do you think they would be very surprised,” she asked him, “if I took off my stockings?”
“Took off your stockings?” he repeated in a surprised voice. “Why should you want to do that?”
“I like the sun on my skin,” she said, “and it’s very hot here.”
“I think your Ladies-in-Waiting would be extremely shocked at such an exposure,” Lord Victor said, but his eyes were twinkling.
The Princess sighed.
“It is always the same when it is anything I want to do,” she said. “It used to be ‘a lady does not do that’, now it will be ‘a Queen
