y
deliberately, letting his gaze travel over her profile, or so much of
it as she presented to him, and so from point to point of her attire
down to her well-made walking shoes--all with a kind of grave wonder.
Once only he glanced up and to the northward, where low on the horizon
a faint line of smoke lingered in the wake of the _Milo_, already
hull-down on her way; and his glance seemed to ask for assurance that
he was not dreaming, that the steamship had really come and gone and
left him this unaccountable guest.

It was just at this moment that she answered him.

"Yes, I can easily understand that you feel it," she said in a musing
tone.

"Eh?" The Commandant had almost forgotten his warning about the ruinous
state of the wall. His eyes had wandered back from the horizon to the
close coils of hair above her neck and to the lobe of her small ear
which (as he found himself noting) had never been pierced to admit an
earring. She turned, and as she caught his gaze he blushed in no little
confusion.

With the point of her sunshade she indicated the deserted battery on
his left.

"Though I suppose," she went on, still musing, "all these
fortifications were really out of date for years before Government
dismantled them."

"If that were true," he replied, "it would date my uselessness further
back than ever."

"Your uselessness?" she echoed, and now it was her eyes that expressed
a grave wonder. "But you were Governor of the Islands; and you are
Governor still, are you not?"

"These batteries," he went on hastily, "though antiquated, were never
out of date, never useless; and there will be reason enough to regret
them if ever an enemy's squadron makes a pounce on the Islands."

"Poor little Islands!" Vashti looked across the Sound with a smile. "It
seems almost comic somehow that anyone should dream of attacking them!"

"Ah!" said he, almost bitterly, "you have been living in great cities
and enlarging your mind."

"And in great cities, you imply, it is easy to despise, to forget?" She
laughed softly. "Brefar--Saaron--Inniscaw!" she murmured, addressing
the Islands by name, "here is one who tells me I forget you! Sir, we
will take a boat this very day, and I will sail you out to the Off
Islands and prove to you if I forget."

"There is no need, Miss Vashti"--he hesitated over the "Miss," but she
did not correct him, and he went on more boldly. "I had a talk this
morning with Captain Whitaker, of the _Milo_.