Her thoughts drifted to a small villa near Messina which Judge Kent had expressed a wish to occupy because he chanced to see it in a rosy mantle of almond blossoms. Mr. Whitfield would attend to estate matters, and Boynton could be trusted to manage the plantations, though they were miles apart. She could do as she pleased now with her money, and if she failed in her mission to Woodbury she would ask her father to take her abroad at once, until Mr. Herriott returned. During that time public discussion of "Ely Twiggs" would end, and probably she need never come back to America. Mr. Herriott evidently wished her out of his life, forever out of his sight, and certainly he should be gratified. Her father could not suspect her reason for going to Europe; he knew how to keep newspapers from her, and as he did not dream she knew the dreadful truth, they might resume the dear old life. So profound was her revery that she had unconsciously opened her eyes, and they looked out, seeing, not the farms and forests gliding by the window, but the sapphire sky, the purple sea, the snow of lemon groves, the red glow of oleander-walled gardens, and the silvery grey-green olive orchards where she might hide her father from shame, herself from the withering scorn of Mr. Herriott's cruel eyes.
Glancing at her over the top of the lifted chart, his attention was arrested by the intense abstraction in which she was plunged. Her extreme pallor was relieved only by vivid color in her delicately curved lips, and under the eyes bluish circles told something of her suffering. He thought of the haunting, wonderful eyes of Urd, and bit his lips as he watched her; so pathetically hopeless, yet unwaveringly proud was the pure face he had loved long and passionately.
The door behind them opened, and a naval officer entered, carrying in his arms a crying child about six months old. The bundle of muslin and lace squirmed and struggled as the man strove to pacify it by beating a tattoo on the window, dangling his watch close to the baby's eyes, and bouncing it up and down. He walked about, sat down, laid the infant face downward across his knees, trotted it, patted it, but with no quieting success, and, when the engine blew long and loud for a bridge crossing, the frightened child screamed distressingly.
The officer rose.
"I am sorry to annoy the passengers, but the nurse has been taken so ill she cannot hold her head up, and as the boy cries to go to her I was obliged to bring him in here. He never saw me until last night. I was on a cruise when his poor mother died."
Once more he essayed to whistle, and swayed to and fro with a rocking motion, but finally desperate, he turned to a young man in a neighboring chair, who was smiling over a cartoon in "Puck."
"Sir, would you do me the great kindness to hold him just a moment, while I get something from his nurse?"
"All right, I will try; but I happen to be a bachelor, and I never held a baby in my life. Come on, little man. Some day you surely will make a star screamer in opera. Now for it, sonny."
He held out his arms, but, as the father attempted to transfer the boy, the sight of another strange face increased his terror; the little hands grasped the officer's beard, and the baby shrieked in protest.
Eglah rose and crossed the car.