"'Has she no other lover?' asked the other. Then the other woman said she believed not, at least none ever came to see her."
Fernando was quite sure she must have lovers by the score. Such a glorious woman as Morgianna could not but have an abundance to choose from.
"You saw Morgianna, Sukey, how did she look?"
"Just as when we left. Not a day older."
"You knew her at sight?"
"Of course; but she didn't know me. I suspect I was a hard-looking case then; for I had just come from the ship and had on my English pea-jacket, and my linen was not the cleanest."
Fernando sat silent for such a long time, that Sukey, who was tired, nodded awhile in silence, then, rolling up in his blanket, lay down under a tree and slept. Fernando still sat gazing into the fire and saying to himself:
"Oh, if it could have been, if it could have been!"
A young woman does a rash thing when she rejects such a warm, manly heart as that of Fernando Stevens. Not all men are capable of such unselfish devotion as his, and Morgianna little dreamed how much she was casting aside.
He was still gazing into the smouldering fire, when Terrence, who had won all the money from the soldier with whom he was playing cards, came to him and said: