they crossed the terraces and entered the cool spacious hall of the hotel. mrs. macmanus, who was sitting alone, came forward and kissed julia warmly.

“so delighted you’ve come down here to liven us up a bit, my dear. maria has almost deserted us. it was only to-day i heard you were coming. bath house is in quite a flutter.”

“my nerves haven’t been worth mentioning since we got julia’s cable,” said mrs. winstone, who was close on julia’s heels. “i came to nevis to rest them, and fanny alone would set them on edge. i don’t believe she’s slept since she heard julia was comin’.”

julia, whose agitation had subsided, hastily swallowed a cup of strong tea, left the group abruptly, and put her arm about fanny. here, at least, was peace and diversion.

“come and talk to me, darling,” she said. “i’ve a thousand things to say to you.”

fanny, who was alone with mr. pirie at the moment, went willingly, and they sat down on one of the sofas at the end of the long hall.

“now let me really look at you. yes, you look like fawcett. do you remember your father?”

“how could i? i was only three when he died.”

“and now you are eighteen! i cannot take it in. i believe i have always thought of you as a baby.”

“oh, do you think granny’ll let me go back with you? she hates the world and despises men—as if they were all alike! but at least—oh, please swear, dear aunt—julia—that you will help me to play a bit while you’re here. you can’t fancy how dull i am. i want to come to bath house every day, and dance every night. you can tell granny that mrs. morison is an old friend of yours, and has come to nevis to see you. of course granny’ll let me go anywhere with you.”

“poor mother!”

“oh, she’s had her own way all her life; just what i’d like to have. please pity me, julia. why, i might marry if i ever had a chance to see a man nearer than through a field-glass. the war-ships that i’ve seen come and go in this roadstead! and the st. kitts girls dancing on them! but i! i might as well be one of those dutch women in the crater of st. batts, making drawn-work from one year’s end to the other.”

“poor child! you may be sure i’ll do all i can. but—ah—” julia felt quite the aunt for a moment. “don’t be in such a hurry to marry.”

“but i am in a hurry to marry. that’s the only road out of nevis. and what girl isn’t in a hurry to marry? if granny wouldn’t give her consent, well—i’d just love to elope.”

julia laughed. “if you are as romantic as that, i must manage that you see a good bit of the world before you enter the somewhat prosaic state of matrimony?—”

“i am romantic—rather! i think of nothing else but love—love—love. i’ve made up a lover out of all the novels i’ve read—and i’ll have one, no fear! but i must have a chance to see him first. so please give it to me.”

“where have you found novels to read? mother long since wrote me to send you none.”

“oh, i know. and aunt maria keeps hers locked up. but i run the estate, you know, and i have to go over to st. kitts every now and again, body-guarded by two old servants, of course, and i’ve made friends with some girls over there, and they’ve lent me a few. and i always manage to pass an hour in the public library, and look at the picture papers. granny takes in nothing but the weekly times. sometimes, when we are driving, she lets me get out and read the cablegrams tacked up on the court-house door! oh, what a place to live in!”

“and yet i could wish that i had never left nevis. i almost wish i need never leave it again.”

“oh, you’ll get over that in about a week. aunt maria yawns all the time. if it weren’t for her complexion and her waist line, she’d be packing now. what does she want? she’s always spying on me.”

mrs. winstone descended upon them precipitately. there was a pleasurable excitement in her mien, and once more julia wondered if she, like many others, had found the tropics bad for the nerves.

“fanny. mr. pirie wants to talk to you, calls you a blushing peach, volcanic product: you’ve quite rejuvenated him. i want to ask julia about our great cause in london.”

“i’ll not talk to any old men. mr. morison’s quite nice. what a bore he’s married. i could have cried when i heard it, although i never could fall in love with a man with gray hair.” and she deliberately walked over to the young man lounging in a chair and staring at her.

“a bit forward, our fanny,” said julia, with a sigh. “but she has all her father’s love of life.”

“and all her grandmother’s of havin’ her own way. not that it’s worth analyzin’. analyzin’s so fatiguin’. she’s young, pretty, healthy, starves for life, and exists on a volcano! i’d feel sorry for her if i wasn’t sure she could take care of herself. what’s your impression of her?”

“she’s a beauty. a rather obvious type, perhaps, but still—how’s my mother?”

“quite all right. she’ll bury us all, and then merely desiccate—or fly off on a broomstick.”

“was—is—do you think she wants to see me?”

“don’t ask me. she won’t talk about you. but—but—” mrs. winstone shot a cunning glance out of her now absent and ingenuous orbs. “do tell me, julia,—i’m expirin’ with curiosity—what brought you here? you hadn’t the least notion of comin’ when i saw you last. has mr. tay?—”

“i don’t care to talk about mr. tay.”

“of course it’s none of my business, but please! i’ve been quite excited ever since i came down to-day—it’s astonishin’ what will interest one on a desert island!—but pirie and hannah have known all about it ever since mrs. morison came. it seems she—ah!—well, came down here on purpose to see you, persuaded her husband he was ill?—”

“what an idea!”

“quite so!”

“but after all, not so unnatural. i may as well tell you, aunt maria—there is no occasion for mystery—i am—that is, in a way—engaged to mr. tay. but it’s all in the air, at present. it is impossible to marry him without an american divorce, and it is not necessary to explain to you how out of the question that will be for some time to come. but—i was feeling rather done, and the truce with the government gave me the opportunity i have so longed for—to come to nevis once more, to see my mother.”

“oh, that is it! nevis is good for the nerves; or would be without fanny, and one or two other distractions. now, i’ve quite an excitin’ duty to perform, and time’s up. mr. tay is here!”

“what?” julia once more had the sensation that nevis had left her moorings. she caught the back of the sofa for support. “what are you talking about? mr. tay is in california.”

“not he. he’s been here, stalkin’ round this island, or cruisin’ round in a motor boat he’s hired, for the last five days. i saw him through the field-glass, but didn’t know what brought him until to-day.”

“but what—what—has he come for? oh, how could he!”

“he’ll tell you that, never fear! the others, includin’ mrs. morison, were all for a surprise, but i thought it my duty to tell you. that is the reason i wanted you to go straight home—surprises are so fatiguin’—but there may be time yet. he’s off somewhere in his boat, and the steamer was ahead of time?—”

julia sprang to her feet. “i’ll go this minute. i can walk. you stay with fanny—poor little thing?—”

and then she sat down. tay was running up the steps of the terrace.

mrs. winstone rose and retreated gracefully. julia’s heart had leaped, but she was very angry. she had made her own plans too long. this was to have been an interval of rest. as tay walked rapidly down the long hall she was not too agitated to observe that although his keen eyes were alight and eager, and his mouth smiling, there was less confidence in his bearing than usual; she also observed that white linen became him remarkably.

“i think this quite abominable of you,” she said coldly, as he dropped into the chair before her. she withheld her hand.

“so does my father. but please don’t be angry with me. i really couldn’t help it when i heard?—”

“how did you hear? dark, of course. what treachery!”

“treachery to me if he hadn’t!”

“how you men stand by one another,” said julia, bitterly. “especially when it is to defeat a woman.”

“well,” said tay, laughing, more at his ease in the presence of futile feminine wrath, “it may be our most contemptible trait, but we shall be driven to practise it more and more, i fancy.”

“i refuse to joke, and i am going home at once.”

she rose.

“sit down,” said tay, peremptorily. “if you don’t, i shall kiss you in the presence of bath house. they can’t hear what we say, but you may be sure they are all watching us.”

julia hesitated, then sat down. “what—what made you do this? i never should have believed it of you. i came here for rest—for—for strength.”

“strength? great scott! you need less, not more.”

“oh—i— you’ll never know what i’ve gone through! i shan’t give you the letters i wrote you?—”

“now, julia, be rational. i simply couldn’t resist coming, that’s all. i cut out business, politics, everything, the moment there was a prospect of seeing you again—and on an enchanted island! the rest can wait, but i, well, i couldn’t! this past month has seemed like a wasted lifetime. i thought i was resigned. i resisted engaging a passage back to england by wireless. i might have got through those six months in california by doing the work of six men; but i could see no reason why i shouldn’t spend at least the interval between steamers with you here. there will be no harm done—much good, for it will make the separation shorter.”

“dan,” said julia, sitting upright, “there is something behind all this. what have you really come here for? after all it’s not like you. in the first place you have imperative duties in california, and then—you know, you know, that i need all my strength.”

he hesitated. should he tell her? but there are certain facts that sound ugly when put into bald english, whatever the excuse; and he doubted if he ever could tell her that he had come to nevis to wait for a cablegram announcing the death of her husband. not now, at all events!

“my dear child!” he said earnestly, and before his hesitation became noticeable. “is not love excuse enough for anything? haven’t men sacrificed duty, done everything that was rash and foolish, for love, since the beginning of time? the prospect of two or three weeks with you on a tropic island was too much for my limited powers of endurance. i suddenly wanted you more than anything on earth. this is a wonderful place—i never knew i had so much romance in me—let us forget the coming separation and be young and happy.”

julia leaned back and looked down. “i should have told you more about my mother,” she said, infusing her tones with ice to keep them from vibrating with delight at the vision he had evoked. “made you realize just what she is. you will never be able to cross her threshold. she would think that you came to see fanny. or if she guessed that you loved me, a married woman,—why! she’s quite capable of locking me up on bread and water.”

“gorgeous! we’ll have a real old-fashioned romance. you will climb out of the window?—”

“she’d nail the jalousies.”

“there are no jalousies i can’t unnail—”

“oh, you’d never get past the gates. she’d post blacks with guns at every corner of the stone wall about the grounds. you don’t know her. she doesn’t belong to this century. she’s never brooked opposition to her will since she was born.”

“those crude forthright persons are just the ones that can always be outwitted. she needn’t know i’m here. i’ll not go to the house. you can meet me in a hundred enchanting nooks—down among the palms on the beach, in the ruins of one of those old estates, in a jungle i’ve discovered, with a creek, and all sorts of tropical trees that give more shade than these feather dusters they call royal palms?—”

“i won’t leave my mother’s house!”

“do you mean that?”

“yes.”

“julia, you have the longest and the blackest eyelashes i ever saw, and you have never given me such an opportunity to admire them. but on the whole i prefer your eyes. look at me.”

julia raised her eyes, and tay held his breath. they were full of tears. “oh, please go, dan,” she whispered. “i suffered death after you left before. i can’t, can’t go through all that again. i couldn’t stay here after you left. i never wanted to see you again until i could marry you. i know now why you have come to nevis. you think that here, where i spent my youth, where it is difficult to remember england and suffrage, i will weaken—that i will go with you to that horrid place and get a divorce. it was very clever of you, and i might! oh, i might! you have been too strong for me from first to last. but i don’t want to! i want to finish my duty, as i planned. please, please go. there is a german steamer in the roadstead. take it and wait on one of the danish islands for the american steamer?—”

“julia, there is only one thing on earth i won’t do for you, and that is to leave you now. and believe me, i had no such subtle far-seeing policy in coming here. my purpose was far simpler. i’d marry you up in fig tree church to-morrow if you were free, but if—as i can’t, i’ll be content with this brief romance. now promise that you will meet me to-morrow over in that jungle?—”

“i won’t! i won’t!”

“then, by god, i’ll manage things myself—if i have to murder niggers and break in?—”

“julia! julia!” cried fanny’s excited voice. “the horses are shod. aunt maria wants to go.”

she was running down the hall. as tay rose she stopped short and stared, her heavy lids lifting.

julia rose hurriedly. “fanny, this is mr. tay, an american friend of mine. my niece, fanny edis.”

“an american?” cried fanny. “another! well, nevis is waking up. are you thinking of buying an estate and planting?” she asked eagerly. “you don’t look as if you had rheumatism.”

tay played a bold hand, knowing that young girls like romance even at second hand. “i came to nevis to see mrs. france,” he said deliberately. “we are engaged to be married, and she tells me it will be difficult to see her in her mother’s house. suppose you lend me a helping hand.” and he held out his with a charming smile.

fanny scowled, and for the moment looked more formidable than handsome; then, with the adaptability of youth, was suddenly afire at the prospect of a vicarious romance.

“how perfectly glorious!” she cried. “oh, i’ll help you, mr. tay. granny’ll never let you in. but i’ll hide you in the shrubberies. i’ll throw you a rope over the wall, made of ancestral sheets?—”

“fanny!” said julia, severely. “we’re not characters in an old-fashioned novel.”

“don’t i wish we were! that’s all i could be. oh, mr. tay, don’t give up.”

“fanny! do you forget that my husband is alive?”

“oh, what’s a lunatic? mr. tay just said you were engaged, and anybody can get a divorce. they’ve been talking about it on the terrace.”

“ah!” julia made an attempt at lightness. “you are not so inhospitable to these times, after all.”

“i’d swallow them whole. but lots of kings and queens were divorced ages ago. when you’re in love i don’t fancy the century makes any difference.”

“good! it all comes back to that, miss edis!”

“when there’s nothing else to be considered. come, fanny.” she held out her hand to tay. “good-by. i hope you will take that german steamer?—”

“aunt julia! where is your west indian hospitality?”

“it must wait. will you go?”

“i shall not. permit me to see you to your carriage.”

“i’d—i’d rather you stayed here. anyhow, it’s good-by.”

“good afternoon,” said tay, shaking her hand heartily.

“good-by.”

“good afternoon.”

julia turned her back and walked up the hall, her head very high, and hoping she could control the longing to run back.

“you won’t give up, mr. tay?” asked fanny, eagerly.

“never, miss edis.”

“oh, something is happening on this old island! and what fun it’ll be to get ahead of granny. i’ll help you. good-by.” she ran after her aunt, but cast a rapid backward glance over her shoulder. english dukes and european princes had been the heroes of her romantic imaginings, americans standing, in her limited knowledge of the outside world, for all that was plebeian and strictly commercial. but she liked the looks of this one. by some freak of fate he was a gentleman. and she was to be a character in a live romance!