When she travelled, she always carried two or three bottles of the liquor with her, wrapped in laces and cambric, in her luggage, for she had grown used to it, and could hardly support life without its soothing influence now. She was careful not to take too much, however, for she worshipped her own beauty; and absinthe was an enemy to a woman's complexion.
She felt to-night, lying in the harbour of Noumea, as she had felt sometimes during a furious sirocco in Sicily—restless, unnerved, fearful of some vague evil, though common sense assured her that nothing of the kind she dimly pictured could possibly happen. She remembered uncomfortable things more vividly and painfully than usual, too; and, at last, she could deny herself the wished-for solace no longer. She rose from her berth, trailing exquisite silk and lace (for the woman must always frame her beauty worthily, even for her own eyes alone), poured out half a glass of absinthe, dropped in her allowance of the drug, added water, till the mixture looked like liquid opal, and sipped the beverage with a kind of dainty greed.
In a few minutes she had ceased to care whether the Bella Cuba lay in the harbour of Noumea or off Sydney Heads. What did it matter? What harm could come?
Presently, lying in her berth, dreamily staring out at the moonlight through the open porthole, her lovely arms pillowing her head, the Countess became aware that the yacht was moving. So they were getting out to sea again, she told herself. A little while ago she would have been delighted, as if at an escape, because, as she had said, Noumea was hateful, and no place for pleasure-seekers. But now that the absinthe and chlorodyne soothed her nerves she was comparatively indifferent whether they stopped or steamed away. Nothing unpleasant had happened. Of course not; why should it? She had racked her nerves, and given herself a headache all in vain. Still, it was good to know that she would see no more of that terrible land of beauty and despair.
She shut her eyes comfortably, and was on the way to the more welcome land of sleep when the boom of the gun, which had wakened Lady Gardiner, roused her from her lotus mood of soft forgetfulness—the greatest joy which she could ever know.
Her brain was dazed with the liquor and the drug she had taken, and she was utterly unable to comprehend the tumult and confusion which followed.
Kate Gardiner had a clue to the mystery which the Countess de Mattos did not possess. The Portuguese beauty had no means of guessing what had brought the Bella Cuba to Noumea. She had never heard any one on board speak the name of Dalahaide, or that of any convict imprisoned at New Caledonia, and the firing between the yacht and the French boat suggested nothing to her but horror.
She, too, was afraid, half-stunned with fear, and she was angry with herself now for having taken the absinthe and chlorodyne, because they prevented her from thinking clearly—the very thing which, a short time ago, she had wished not to do. At first she lay still, burying her head in the pillows; then she murmured prayers to more than one saint, for she was an ardent Catholic; and at last, unable to bear the suspense and isolation any longer, she threw open the stateroom door and ran out into the cabin.
No one was there; but above the sound of trampling overhead she thought she could distinguish voices, and Virginia Beverly's was among them. If Virginia were on deck, the Countess said in her mind, it would be well for her to be there too.