ON the second day after the alarm, Paul took the Indians back to Port aux Pins, and dismissed them, after handing the ringleader to the proper authorities; the others slunk away with their long black hair hanging down below their white man’s hats, their eagle profiles, in spite of fierceness of outline, entirely unalarming. Paul then selected half a dozen Irishmen, the least dilapidated he could find (the choice lay between Indians and Irishmen), and brought them to Jupiter Light to take the place of the crestfallen aborigines. He remained there a few days to see that all went well; then he returned to Port aux Pins for a week’s stay. “Come a little way up the lake to meet me,” he said to Eve, as he bade her good-by; “I shall be along about four o’clock next Wednesday afternoon.”

His manner still remained a little despotic. But to women of strong will despotism is attractive; when a despotism of love, it is enchanting. Eve’s feeling was, “Oh, to have at last found some one who is stronger than I!”

Even now not for a moment did she bend her opinions, her decisions, to his, of her own accord; each time it was simply that she was conquered; after contesting the point as strongly as she could, how she gloried in feeling herself overridden at last! She would look at Paul with delighted eyes, and laugh in triumph. To have yielded because she loved him, would have had a certain sweetness; but to be conquered unyielding, that was a satisfaction whose intensity could go no further.

Since that walk in the darkness from the Indian quarters to Cicely’s lodge, when, suddenly, she had let her love have its way, she had allowed herself to be carried along by chance events whithersoever they pleased; she had defied conscience, she had accepted the bliss that hung temptingly before her; she did not think, she only enjoyed. Once or twice she had sent forth mentally this defiance,—“If you feel as I do, then you may judge me!” To whom was this said? To Fate? To the world at large? In reality it was said to all women who in that summer of 1869 were young enough to love: “If you can feel as I do, then you may judge me.” But it was only once or twice that this mood had come to her, only once or twice that she thought of anything but Paul; his offered hand taken, her acceptance of it was at least superb in its completeness; there was no looking back, no fear, no regret; nothing but the fulness of joy.

Still sweeter was it to feel that, deeply as she loved, she was loved as deeply. Paul might be imperious, he might be negligent in explaining things, and in other small ways; but there was nothing negligent in his passion. His genius for directness, which puzzled Hollis in other matters, showed itself also here; he had little to say—that was possible—but no woman could have misunderstood the language of his eyes or of the touch of his hand; or fail to be thrilled by it. The feeling that possessed him went straight to its end, namely, Eve Bruce for his wife; the same Eve whom he had not liked at all at first; to whom he had found it difficult only a few weeks before to write a short letter. This inconsistency did not trouble him; love had arrived, had descended upon him in some way, he knew not how, had taken possession of him by force and forever—he recognized that, and did not contest it. Women are only women: this had been one of the settled convictions in the depths of his mind, and it was a conviction not much changed even now; yet this same Paul, with his mediÆval creed, made a lover much more invincible than a hundred, a thousand other men, who would have said, perhaps, that they revered women more. “Revered?” Paul would have answered, “I don’t revere Eve, I love her!”

Whatever name he gave it, she knew that she held the joy of his life in her hands, that he would come to her for this—had already come; and that it always would be so. This was happiness enough for her.

This happiness had existed but ten days. But these days had seemed like months of joy, she had lived each moment so fully. “Sejed, Prince of Ethiopia, vowed to have three days of uninterrupted happiness—” she might have remembered the old fable and its ending. But she remembered nothing, she scorned to remember; let the unhappy, the unloved, think of the past; she would drink in all the sunshine of the present, she would live, live!

“Row a little way up the lake to meet me,” Paul had said. At half-past three of the afternoon he had indicated, she went to the beach; one of the Irishmen, under her direction, began to push down a canoe. The open way in which she did this—in which she had done everything since that night—was in itself an effectual disguise; no one thought it remarkable that she should be going to meet Paul. As she was about to take her place in the canoe, Hollis appeared.

“Going far? We don’t know much about that Paddy,” he said, in an undertone.

“Only to meet Paul.”

“If he’s late, you may have to go a good way.”

“He won’t be late.”

“Well, he may be,” answered Hollis, patiently. “I guess I’ll take you, if you’ll let me; and then, when we meet, I’ll come back with his man in the other canoe.”

“Very well,” Eve responded. She did not comment upon the terms of his offer, she did not care what he thought. She took her place, and he paddled westward.

It was a beautiful afternoon; a slight coolness, which made itself felt through the sunshine, showed that the short Northern summer was approaching its end. As she sat with her back to the prow, she was obliged to turn her head to look for the other canoe; and this she did many times. After one of these quests, she saw that Hollis’s eyes were upon her.

“Is there any change in me?” she asked, laughing.

“Rather!”

“What is it?”

But poor Hollis did not know how to say, “You are so much more beautiful.”

“It’s my white dress,” Eve suggested, in a somewhat troubled voice. “I had it made in Port aux Pins. It’s only piquÉ.” She smoothed the folds of the skirt for a moment, doubtfully.

“I guess white favors you,” answered Hollis, with what he would have called a festive wave of his hand.

Her mood had now changed. “It’s no matter, I’m not afraid!” She was speaking her thoughts aloud, sure that he would not understand. But he did understand.

The other canoe came into sight after a while, shooting round a point; Eve waved her handkerchief in answer to Paul’s hail; the two boats met.

“Mr. Hollis knows that you are to take me back,” said Eve, as eagerly as a child.

Paul glanced at Hollis. But the other man bore the look bravely. “Proud to be of service,” he answered, waving his hand again, with two fingers extended lightly. He changed places with Paul; Paul and Eve, in their canoe, glided away.

It was at this moment that Cicely, who had been asleep, opened her eyes. Her lodge was quiet; Mrs. Mile was reading near the window, her seat carefully placed so that the light should fall over her left shoulder upon the page.

Cicely gazed at her for some time; then she jumped from the couch with a quick bound. “It’s impossible to lie here another instant and see that History of Windham! The next thing, you’ll be proposing to read it aloud to me; you look exactly like a woman who loves to read aloud.” She began to put on her shoes.

“You are going for a walk? I shall be glad to go too,” answered Mrs. Mile promptly, putting a marker in her book, and rising.

“No,” responded Cicely; “I can’t have those boots of yours pounding along beside me to-day, Priscilla Jane. Impossible.”

“Well, I do declare!” said Mrs. Mile, reduced in her surprise to the language of her youth. “They can’t pound much, Mrs. Morrison, in the sand; and there’s nothing but sand here.”

“They grind it down!” answered Cicely. “You can call grandpa, if you don’t want me to go alone; but come with me to-day you shall not, you clean, broad-faced, turn-out-your-toes, do-your-duty old relict of Abner Whittredge Mile.” She looked at Mrs. Mile consideringly as she said this, bringing out each word in a soft, clear tone.

The judge was listlessly roving about the beach. Mrs. Mile gave him Cicely’s request. “She is saying very odd things to-day, sir,” she added, impersonally.

The judge, alarmed, hurried to the lodge; Mrs. Mile could not keep up with him.

“Priscilla Jane is short-winded, isn’t she?” remarked Cicely, at the lodge door, as he joined her. “Whenever she comes uphill, she always stops, and pretends to admire the view, while she pants, ‘What a beautiful scene! What a privilege to see it!’”

The judge grinned; he too had heard Mrs. Mile speak of “privileges.”

“Come for a walk, grandpa,” Cicely went on. She took his arm and they went away together, followed by the careful eyes of the nurse, who had paused at the top of the ascent.

“This is a ruse, grandpa,” Cicely said, after a while. “I wanted to take a walk alone, and she wouldn’t let me; but you will.”

“Why alone, my child?”

“Because I’m always being watched; I’m just like a person in a cell, don’t you know, with one of those little windows cut in the door, through which the sentinel outside can always look in; I am never alone.”

“It must be dreadful,” the judge answered, with conviction.

“Wait till you have seen Priscilla Jane in her night-gown,” said Cicely, with equal conclusiveness.

“Heaven forbid!” said the judge, with a shrill little chuckle. Then he turned and looked at her; she seemed so much like her old self.

“You will let me go, grandpa?” She put up her face and kissed him.

“If you will promise to come back soon.”

“Of course I will.”

He let her go on alone. She looked back and smiled once or twice; then he lost sight of her; he returned to the beach by a roundabout way, in order to deceive Priscilla Jane; he was almost as much pleased as Cicely to outwit her.

Cicely went on through the forest; she walked slowly, not stopping to gather flowers as usual. After a while her vague glance rested upon two figures in the distance. She stopped, and as, by chance, she was standing close beside the trunk of a large tree, her own person was concealed. The two figures were coming in her direction, they drew nearer, they paused; and then there followed a picture as old as Paris and Helen, as old as Tristram and Isolde: a lover taking in his arms the woman he adores. And it was Paul Tennant who was the lover; it was Eve who looked up at him with all her heart in her eyes.

A shock passed over Cicely, the expression of her face changed rapidly as her gaze remained fixed upon Eve: first, surprise; then a strange quick anger; then perplexity. She left her place, and went rapidly forward.

Eve saw her first, she drew herself away from Paul; but immediately she came back to him, laying her hand on his shoulder as if to hold him, to keep him by her side.

“Paul,” said Cicely, still looking at Eve, “something has come to me; Eve told me that she did a dreadful thing.” And now she transferred her gaze to Paul, looking at him with earnestness, as if appealing to him to lighten her perplexity.

“Yes, dear; let us go back to the camp,” said Paul, soothingly.

“Wait till I have told you all. She came to me, and asked—I don’t know where it was exactly?” And now she looked at Eve, inquiringly.

Eve’s eyes met hers, and the deep antagonism of the expression roused the dulled intelligence. “How you do hate me, Eve! It’s because you love Paul. I don’t see how Paul can like you, when you were always so hard to Ferdie; for from the first she was hard to him, Paul; from the very first. I remember—“

Eve, terrified, turned away, thus releasing Cicely from the spell of her menacing glance.

Cicely paused; and then went back to her former narrative confusedly, speaking with interruptions, with pauses. “She came to me, Paul, and she asked, ‘Cicely, do you know how he died?’ And I said, ‘Yes; there were two negroes.’ And she answered me, ‘No; there were no negroes—’”

“Dreams, Cicely,” said Paul, kindly. “Every one has dreams like that.”

“No. I have a great many dreams, but this was not one of them,” responded Cicely. “Wait; it will come to me.”

“Take her back to the camp; carry her,” said Eve, in a sharp voice.

“Oh, she’ll come without that,” Paul answered, smiling at the peremptory tone.

“You go first, then. I will bring her.”

“Don’t leave me alone with Eve,” pleaded Cicely, shrinking close to Paul.

“Take her back,” said Eve. And her voice expressed such acute suffering that Paul did his best to content her.

“Come,” he said, gently, taking Cicely’s hand.

“A moment,” answered Cicely, putting her other hand on Paul’s arm, as if to hold his attention. “And then she said: ‘Don’t you remember that we escaped through the woods to the north point, and that you tried to push off the boat, and couldn’t. Don’t you remember that gleam of the candle down the dark road?’”

Eve made an involuntary movement.

“I wonder what candle she could have been thinking of!” pursued Cicely, in a musing voice. “There are a great many candles in the Catholic churches, that I know.”

Eve looked across at Paul with triumph in her eyes.

“And she said that a baby climbed up by one of the seats,” Cicely went on. “And that this man—I don’t know who he was, exactly—made a dash forward—” Here she lost the thread, and stopped. Then she began again: “She took me away ever so far—we went in a steamboat; and Ferdie died all alone! You can’t like her for that, Paul; you can’t!” Her face altered. “Why don’t I see him over there on the other beach?” she asked, quickly.

“You see?” said Eve, with trembling lips.

“Yes,” answered Paul, watching the quivering motion. “We haven’t had our walk, Eve; remember that.”

“I can come out again. After we have got her back.”

Cicely had ceased speaking. She turned and searched Eve’s face with eyes that dwelt and lingered. “How happy you look, Eve! And yet I am sure you have no right to be happy, I am sure there is some reason—The trouble is that I can’t remember what it is! Perhaps it will come to me yet,” she added, threateningly.

Paul, drew her away; he took her back to the camp.

That evening, Eve came to him on the beach.

“Do you love me? Do you love me the same as ever?” she said.

He could scarcely hear her.

“Do you think I have had time to change since afternoon?” he asked, laughing.

And then life came back to the woman by his side, came in the red that flushed her cheeks and her white throat, in her revived breath.

“Paul,” she said, after a while, “send Cicely home; send her home with her grandfather, she can travel now without danger.”

“I can’t desert Cicely,” said Paul, surprised.

“It wouldn’t be desertion; you can always help her. And she would be much happier there than here.”

“She’s not going to be very happy anywhere, I am afraid.”

“The judge would be happier, too,” said Eve, shifting her ground.

“I dare say. Poor old man!”

“A winter in Port aux Pins would kill him,” Eve continued.

“I intended to take them south before the real winter, the deep snow.”

“Mrs. Mile could go now. And—and perhaps Mr. Hollis.”

“Kit? What could Kit do down there?”

“Marry Miss Sabrina,” suggested Eve, with a sudden burst of wild laughter, in which Paul joined.

“They are all to go, are they? But you and I are not to go; is that your plan?” he went on.

“Yes.”

He kissed her. “Paul Tennant and his wife will take Cicely south themselves,” he said, stroking her hair caressingly. “It’s always braided so closely, Eve; how long is it when down?”

But she did not hear these whispered words; she drew herself away from him with passionate strength. “No, she must go with some one else; she can go with any one you please; we can have two nurses, instead of one. But you—you must not go; you must stay with me.”

“Why, Eve, I hardly know you! Why do you feel so about poor little Cicely? Why strike a person who’s down?”

“Oh, yes—down; that is what you all say. Yet she has had everything, even if she has lost it now; and some people go through all their lives without one single thing they really care for. She shall not rob me of this, I will not let her. I defy her; I defy her!”

“She shall go back to Romney,” said Paul. What these disagreements between the two women were about, he did not know. His idea was that he would marry Eve as soon as possible—within the next ten days; and then, after they were married, he would tell her that it was best that they should take Cicely south themselves. She would see the good sense of his decision, she would not dispute his judgment when once she was his wife; she could not have any real dislike for poor little Cicely, that was impossible.

Eve came back to him humbly enough. “I am afraid you do not like my interfering with your plans?” she said.

“You may interfere as much as you like,” answered Paul, smiling.