The Island Mystery

Miss Daisy Donovan is a bright-faced, clear-eyed, romantic-souled girl. She had finished her course of study in one of the universities of the Middle-west without becoming a cultivated prig. In spite of the fact that history, economics, emasculated philosophy and a kind of intellectual complexion cream called literature had been smeared all over her by earnest professors, she had never learned to take herself, life or society at all seriously. She had all the vitality which gives American women their singular charm and none of the appalling earnestness of high endeavour which sometimes leads even very charming women into repulsive kinds of foolishness. The thought of a marriage between Miss Daisy and King Konrad Karl--with Madame Ypsilante in the near background--affected Gorman with a feeling of physical nausea.

The King possessed a certain capacity for sympathy. He guessed something of what was in Gorman's mind.

"After all," he said, "she would be a queen. It is something. You have