tations alone.

Yet though full of content in her heart, Mr. Rhys and his affection
seemed both at a distance. It was so exactly the Mr. Rhys of Plassy,
that Eleanor could not in a moment realize their changed relations and
find her own place. A little thing administered a slight corrective to
this reckoning.

The little canoe had come to land. Eleanor was taken out of it safely,
and then for a moment left to herself; for Mr. Rhys was engaged in a
colloquy with his boatman and another native who had come up. Not being
able to understand a word of what was going on, though from the tones
and gestures she guessed it had reference to the disembarkation of the
schooner's party, and a little ready to turn her face from view,
Eleanor stood looking landward; in a maze of strangeness that was not
at all unhappy. The cocoa-nut tops waved gently a welcome to her; she
took it so; the houses looked neat and inviting; glimpses of other
unknown foliage helped to assure her she had got home; the country
outlines, so far as she could see them, looked fair and bright. Eleanor
was taking note of details in a dreamy way, when she was surprised by
the sudden frank contact of lips with hers; lips that had no
strangeness of their own to contend with. Turning hastily, she saw that
the natives with whom Mr. Rhys had been talking had run off different
ways, and they two were alone. Eleanor trembled as much as she had done
when she first read Mr. Rhys's note at Plassy. And his words when he
spoke did not help her, they were spoken so exactly like the Mr. Rhys
she had known there. Not exactly, neither, though he only said,

"Do you want this cloak on any longer?"

"Yes, thank you," said Eleanor stammering,--"I do not feel it."

Which was most literally true, for at that moment she did not feel
anything external. He looked at her, and exercising his own judgment
proceeded to unclasp the cloak from her shoulders and hang it on his
arm, while he put her hand on the other.

"There is no need for you to be troubled with this now," said he. "I
only put it round you to protect your dress." And with her bag in his
hand, they went up from the river-side and past the large house with
the colonnade. "Whither now?" thought Eleanor, but she asked nothing.
One or two more houses were passed; then a little space without houses;
then came a paling enclosure, of considerable size, apparently, filled
with trees and vines. A gate opened in this and let them t