Dame Higgins promised discretion, but she had several visits to pay that day.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SPIDER’S WEBS.
It was just midnight, and John Bonyton still paced the sands at the head of the Pool, striving in vain to wrest his thoughts from the one object of his devotion. At length, as the moon was lost in the west, he turned wearily homeward, with that vague unrest with which persons turn to a disagreeable location. Emerging from a grove of pines, he observed a figure leaning against the bole of one of these, with head drooping upon its breast.
“What do you here, Acashee?” he asked, coldly, as he stood before her.
“Think of John Bonyton.”
“I like it not, Acashee. I like it not. Thou art beautiful—thou art bright, and full of power. Go seek a chief of thy tribe best worthy of thee, and pursue me no more.”
“I AM beautiful, John Bonyton. Fresh, and strong, and straight as the mountain-ash. I am fit to mother heroes, John Bonyton, and you turn from me to love a girl small as the rabbit compared with the panther.”
She approached him; she laid her slender wrist upon his arm, and looked into his face with her dark eyes, that had a serpent fascination in them, while her parted coral lips showed the small white teeth, and gave an indescribable seductiveness to her person.