n.

"Oh no! no!" sighed Lilian with a shiver as she quickly drew
away--"not perfectly, oh not perfectly! That is impossible here, where
that black death can at any moment extinguish all our light."

"Be still! be still!" said Reyburn. "Why do you speak of it?" he cried
roughly. "Isn't it enough to know that some day it must come?--

"The iron hand that breaks our band,
It breaks my bliss--it breaks my heart!"

He left her side in a sudden agitation a moment, and walked the deck
again; and before he turned about Lilian had slipped below.

The next afternoon the Beachbird anchored within sight of shore and
outside a long low reef where they saw a palm-plume tossing, and a
boat came off, bringing Helen and her father.

John, who had begun at last to find his sea-legs, stood as eager and
impatient to welcome the new-comers, while every dip of the shining
oars lessened the distance between them, as if the cruise were just
beginning; but Lilian, in the evening shadow behind him, knew that her
share in the cruise was over.

"Is it the fierce and farouche duenna who wanted to annihilate me so
when I bade you adieu one night?" asked Reyburn, taking Lilian upon
his arm for a promenade upon the deck while they waited. "Let me see:
she was very young, was she not, and tall, and ugly? Is it her destiny
to watch over you? If she proves herself disagreeable, I will rig a
buoy and drop her overboard. After all, she is only a child. Ah no,"
he said, half under his breath, "the end is not yet."

"She is no longer a child," said Lilian, "Her father writes that he
hardly dares call her the same name, she is so changed. While I have
been withering up in the North, two equatorial years down here have
wrought upon her as they do upon the flowers. He says no Spanish woman
rivals her. Well, it will please--"

Just then Reyburn handed her the glass he had been using, and pointed
it for her.

"Can it be possible?" said Lilian. "Has Helen been transfigured to
that?" and something, she knew not what, sent a quiver through her and
made the image in the glass tremble--the image of a tall and shapely
girl whose round and perfect figure swayed to the boat's motion, lithe
as a reed to the wind, while she stood erect looking at something that
had been pointed out, and the boatmen paused with their oars in the
air; the image of a face on whose dark cheek the rose was burning, in
whose dark eye a veiled lustre was shining, around whose cr