icturesqueness without ornamentation. He had a strong
will and a healthy imagination. He was a man of mettle and decision.

Of all who had entered her field outside of Dyck Calhoun he was the most
attractive; he was the nearest to the possible husband which she must
one day take. And if at any day at all, why not now when she needed
a man as she had never done--when she needed to forget? The sardonic
critic might ask why she did not seek forgetfulness in flight; why she
remained in Jamaica where was what she wished to forget. There was no
valid reason, save a business one, why she should remain in Jamaica, and
she was in a quandary when she put the question. There were, however,
other reasons which she used when all else failed to satisfy her
exigeant mind. There was the question of vessels to Virginia or New
York. They were few and not good, and in any case they could have no
comfortable journey to the United States for several weeks at least,
for, since the revolutionary war, commerce with the United States was
sparse.

Also, there was the question of Salem. She did not feel she ought to
waste the property which her Uncle Bryan had nurtured with care. In
justice to his memory, and in fairness to Darius Boland, she felt she
ought to stay--for a time. It did not occur to her that these reasons
would vanish like mist--that a wilful woman would sweep them into the
basket of forgetfulness, and do what she wished in spite of reason: that
all else would be sacrificed, if the spirit so possessed her. Truth was
that, far back in her consciousness, there was a vision of better days
and things. It was as though some angel touched the elbow of her spirit
and said: "Stay on, for things will be better than they seem. You will
find your destiny here. Stay on."

So she had stayed. She was deluding herself to believe that what she was
doing was all for the best; that the clouds were rising; that her fate
had fairer aspects than had seemed possible when Dyck Calhoun told her
the terrible tale of the death of her father, Erris Boyne. Yet memory
gave a touch of misery and bitterness to all she thought and did. For
twenty-five years she had lived in ignorance as to her paternity. It
surely was futile that her mother should have suffered all those years,
with little to cheer her, while her daughter should be radiant in health
and with a mind free from care or sadness. Yet the bitterest thing
of all was the thought that her father was a t