in
Gregson."

For all her preoccupation with her own problems the name caught her with
new astonishment.

"Gregson! The trader?"

"Captain," he repeated, significantly. "Captain Gregson."

"You talked with him?" she exclaimed. "But he--but you--I've heard you
say--"

Thereupon Pastor Spener took the upper hand decisively, like one who has
come off well in an anxious skirmish over difficult ground.

"Never mind what you have heard, my dear. Many things have been said of
him--idle chatter of the beaches. He has been sadly misjudged. Captain
Gregson is a very remarkable man, besides being the wealthiest in the
islands--undeniably, quite the wealthiest.... He intends joining our
church."

Miss Matilda rose from the table and moved away to the open side of the
veranda, looking off to seaward. Tall, erect, with her hands resting on
the high rail, she made a decorous and restful figure against the sunset
sky. But those hands, so casual seeming, were driving their nails into
the wood. For within the maiden breast of Miss Matilda, behind that
obtrusive composure, there seethed a tumult of question, alarm,
bewilderment....

This startling dissertation of her father's--she could not begin to
think what it meant. Was it possible, in spite of all assurance, was it
possible that he knew, had heard or guessed--about Motauri? And if he
had, was it conceivable that he should speak so--to state, as it might
be, the very terms of her guilt, an actual plea for that unnameable
temptation to which she had been drifting? It was mad. She could no
longer be sure of anything, of her safety, her purpose, her father,
herself--truly, of herself. And Gregson! An evil presentiment had
pierced her at his mention of the gross, dark, enigmatic trader, whose
intent regard she had felt fixed upon her so often--whenever she met him
on the village path or passed his broad-eaved house by the beach. What
did it mean?

Through a gap in the passion-vine she gazed out and over the whole side
of the mountain into the wide glory of the sunset. There was nothing to
interrupt that full outward sweep, nothing between her and the horizon.

The parsonage at Wailoa could never have been placed or built by any one
of the Reverend Spener's level temperament. He had never found anything
but a grievance in the fact that he should have to dwell so far aloft
from routine affairs in a spot of the wildest and most romantic beauty.
The village itself lay hidden bel