“And pray how do you know, Miss St. John?” asked Aunt Di, coming out stiffly from behind her handkerchief. “Mr. Hoffman would have been very glad to—and, as it happens, he is not in his room at all.”
“Then of course—Oh, irretrievable folly!” I exclaimed, in dismay.
“But it isn’t John Hoffman, I tell you,” said Aunt Diana, relapsing into dejection again. “He has gone out sailing with the Van Andens; I heard them asking him—a moonlight excursion.”
Then the three of us united:
| Myself (doubtfully). “Can it be— | ——the Captain!” |
| Sara (decidedly). “It must be— | |
| Aunt Di (dejectedly). “Yes, it is— |
THE ANCIENT CITY.
IN TWO PARTS.—PART II.
“The tide comes in; the birds fly low,
As if to catch our speech:
Ah, Destiny! why must we ever go
Away from the Florida Beach?”
AUNT DIANA declared that I must go with her back to the hotel, and I in my turn declared that if I went Sara must accompany me; so it ended in our taking the key of the house from the sleepy Sabre-boy and all three going back together through the moon-lighted street across the plaza to the hotel. Although it was approaching midnight, the Ancient City had yet no thought of sleep. Its idle inhabitants believed in taking the best of life, and so on moonlight nights they roamed about, two and two, or leaned over their balconies chatting with friends across the way in an easy-going, irregular fashion, which would have distracted an orthodox New England village, where the lights are out at ten o’clock, or they know the reason why. When near the hotel we saw John Hoffman coming from the Basin.
