The hero was like most of those
gentlemen who live their little lives in the novels of the day, only
Harley had modified his accomplishments in certain directions.
Robert Osborne--such was his name--was not the sort of man to do
impossible things for his heroine. He was not reckless. He was not
a D'Artagnan lifted from the time of Louis the Fourteenth to the
dull, prosaic days of President Faure. He was not even a Frenchman,
but an essentially American American, who desires to know, before he
does anything, why he does it, and what are his chances of success.
I am not sure that if he had happened to see her struggling in the
ocean he would have jumped in to rescue the young woman to whom his
hand was plighted--I do not speak of his heart, for I am not Harley,
and I do not know whether or not Harley intended that Osborne should
be afflicted with so inconvenient an organ--I am not sure, I say,
that if he had seen his best-beloved struggling in the ocean Osborne
would have jumped in to rescue her without first stopping to remove
such of his garments as might impede his progress back to land again.
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