She was awakened by the rattling of her jalousie, and lifted her head, wondering if a storm were rising.

“Julia! Julia!” called an imperative voice.

She sprang to her feet and held her breath, not believing herself awake.

“Julia!” This time the voice was savage. “If you don’t come out, I’ll break in. What I’ve got to say won’t keep.”

Julia unfastened the jalousie. Tay stood there in his evening clothes, and without a hat. His face was distraught.

“Dan!” gasped Julia.

He put his hands about her waist and lifted her down. “Now,” he said, “take me to some place where we can talk, and as far from the house and the gates as possible. They’ll be coming home presently.”

She walked swiftly down a path, turned to the right, and pushing aside the heavy growth from an older path, long out of use, led the way to the ruins of a bath-house in a corner of the garden. It was surrounded by heavy palms, but its paneless windows admitted the full moon’s light. Julia sat limply down on the circular seat before the empty pool. Through the open doorway she could see and hear the sea. The moonlight was dazzling, Nevis having forgotten to shake out her night-robes. Her bewildered mind took note of details while Tay walked back a few steps to make sure they had not been followed.

He came in and stood before her.

“There’s the devil to pay!” he exclaimed. “Did you get a cable last Monday?”

“Yes. Didn’t you?”

“I did not, or I shouldn’t be wanting to shoot myself. Dark promised to cable the moment it happened, and only to-night, half an hour ago, I got a cable from Lady Dark telling me that France died last Monday, and that she had only just heard it. Confound Dark! Talk about the wrath of God. It’s chain lightning compared to an Englishman.”

“No doubt the duke suppressed the notice. It would be like him.”

“It was Dark’s business to find out. I should have employed a detective. When a thing’s to do, do it. Well, here’s the result! I’ve got myself into the devil of a mess?—”

“You’ve been making love to Fanny.”

“I have—or rather—not been making love from my point of view—only she doesn’t see it in that light. I’ve been flirting like the deuce. When I got your note that morning, I took it for pure caprice. It seemed to me totally without excuse. You had promised faithfully to meet me every day. I had not a suspicion of the truth. Moreover, I had just received cables from California that stirred me up. They couldn’t understand my desertion at such a moment, and no wonder. To be told that I had come here for nothing—to be coolly asked to wait a week—to know that I had to stay whether I would or not—well, I felt as if hell had been let loose inside of me. Fanny brought the note?—”

“Fanny!” Julia sprang to her feet. “Fanny? I didn’t give it to her.”

“She brought it all the same, and she looked something more than ripe for a flirtation, and beautiful?—”

“You have fallen in love with her! I saw you this morning.”

“Oh, you did? Well, you didn’t see much. I am not in love with her, but—well, it’s got to be said—she’s in love with me, or thinks she is. I was treated to high tragedy an hour since in the garden of Bath House. I never for a moment thought she would take the thing seriously—have seen too many summer flirtations—American girls know exactly what that sort of thing means—but this girl might have Nevis inside of her. She wanted to elope with me to-night—threatens to drown herself?—”

“Great heaven! What have you done?”

“I feel like Don Juan, of course, only as it happens I haven’t made downright love to her. I was on the edge of it once or twice, she’s so infernally pretty, but, well, hang it all, I’m in love with you to the limit, all the more so that you’re not dead easy game. If I hadn’t been, I’d have made love to her fast enough. But I flirted as hard as I know how, and she took that for love-making, thought I held back because I felt bound to you, and—well—it was the hateful things she said about you to-night that put me in a rage and made me hustle her back into the ball-room and into the arms of one of her other admirers. I had gone as far as I intended, and made up my mind, not two minutes before I got Lady Dark’s cable, to go to one of the other islands and wait for the steamer. When I got that cable, of course I understood. Now are you properly repentant? Why in thunder didn’t you tell me in your note?—”

“Of course, I thought you knew—”

“Never take anything for granted where there are big things at stake. But what are we to do? I’m going to marry you to-morrow evening at seven o’clock over in Fig Tree Church, but what is to be done with Fanny? She’s all fixed for tragedy, and there’s no knowing just what a girl of that sort might do. I don’t care to begin our life with a horror. You must take her in hand to-morrow morning and talk her into reason. I gave her to understand that I didn’t love her, but a man has to say a thing of that sort so decently that a girl never believes him—particularly a girl like Fanny, who has a sublime confidence in herself I’ve never seen equalled. What’s to be done? What’s to be done?”

“Are you quite sure that you love me, that you haven’t really wavered?—”

“Oh, lord! I’m more mad about you than ever.”

“Would you have married Fanny if you had met her first?”

“There’s no woman on earth I should ever have wanted to marry but you. Do you fancy a man thinks of marriage with every girl he puts in his time with? I’ve had a dozen flirtations—as hard and a good deal longer than this; and neither of us the worse, I may add. I’m no heart-breaker. Our girls know the game too well.”

“If I thought you were merely bent upon being honorable?—”

“Julia, if I didn’t love you, I’d tell you so. Do you suppose I’m the man to jump into matrimony blindfolded? I’ve seen too many of my friends marry—and divorce four years later. I’m no cand............