“Or something in that line, possibly—yes.”
“Mabel,” said the girl, “is free now.”
Onslow nodded dreamily, and once more let his gaze roam out across the waters. The boat rode uncared for over the gentle oily swells, and the sound of the surf crumbling on the distant keys fell on his ears, and droned to him a lingering tale of might-have-been. Mabel was free! The woman who had once promised to be his wife—the woman whose memory had driven him from pillar to post across the world through all those long, wild years, because his abiding love for her was too great a torment to be borne when he rested for a breathing space in one spot, and had time for thought. The woman who had, by pressure, been made to marry another man, whom neither on her wedding day nor at any after time did she ever love, was free again. Mabel Duvernay now, and Mabel Kildare no longer; but Mabel still, and free.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE CYCLONE.
A shining-faced negro waiter came up in answer to the bell, and brought tumblers of tinkling ice and water. Both Onslow and Miss Kildare drank thirstily, and then lay back again in their cane chairs, panting. The close heat was something terrible. There was not a breath of either sea breeze or land breeze, and the electric fan which whirred on the table behind them did little more than send a blast of sickly warmth. Down the long line of the piazza were the rest of the people in the hotel, the men cursing and mopping their faces, the women with closed eyes fanning themselves languidly. And, overhead, the shingles of the roof crackled and rustled in the baking air as though they were alive.
Night came, and the bell clashed out its summons to dinner, but no one went in. The wooden sides of the hotel, baked through and through by a month of tropical sun, had made the rooms unendurable. So they stayed where they were, in the hot, oppressive dark, and blinked at the white summer lightning which splashed the violet heavens in front of them. In heavy panting beats the night seemed to close down upon them and pen them in, so that it was a labor to breathe.
“I can’t stand this,” said Miss Kildare at last.
“You’ve got to,” replied Onslow, wearily, “unless you choose to go down the beach and sit in the water with your clothes on.”
“That would be some relief, although the water is as hot as tea. But I shan’t do that. I shall walk out along the pier over the sea. One may faint half way, and tumble over and get drowned; but anyway that’s better than staying here and being cooked slowly.”