Never, save in Venice, have I seen such a gorgeous array of color in a landscape.
Five hours we had in St. Thomas while the Diana put off hundreds of barrels of cement; but what with the gayly painted boats and their dark-skinned crews, the naked brown boys diving and swimming for pennies and dimes in the harbor, a walk to Bluebeard’s Tower and Blackbeard’s Castle, we were well amused. Particularly so was Dorothea, who disappeared from my side for a half-hour while I chatted with the captain, rejoining me in the tiny palm-bordered park near the landing.
She was glowing with happiness.
“What do you think, Charlotte?” she exclaimed. “I have a letter from Duke. Not written after we sailed, of course, for it couldn’t have reached me. He bearded mother in her fortress the morning we left Washington. She was out, or said she was, but sent a note saying that I had gone on a journey and would be absent for a month. He went directly to the Winthrops for news and they told him I was with you and that if he wrote at once by special delivery he could reach the ship before it left New York dock. He sent the letter to the captain and asked him to give it to me at St. Thomas for a surprise. The captain is such a nice man, though a good deal of a tease! Mr. Winthrop was delighted to hear you were not alone. Poor Miss Winthrop has influenza and they both wish they had taken this trip. It seems they are thinking of it just a little.”
“The Winthrops coming on this voyage,” I exclaimed. “Impossible! They hadn’t an idea of it.”
“Mightn’t he want to interview the governor and look at the island?”
“He hasn’t time. I chose this journey instead of another so that I could interview the governor and look at the islands myself.”
“Well, I dare say there’s nothing in it. Duke didn’t speak of it as anything settled, and he may have misunderstood, his mind being on me. May I read you the letter—I mean parts of it?”
“I shouldn’t expect to hear all of it,” I replied dryly.
“Yet the bits I leave out are the ones that show him as he is,” she said, looking off into the grove of palms. “Duke is so conscientious that until we succeed in melting mother—that would be a good title for a story, ‘Melting Mother’!—and until she sanctions an engagement he won’t let himself go, even on paper. So I get only a lovely sort of ‘seepage’ that breaks through in spite of him!”