Luisa spoke but little. The kind-faced, quiet-voiced missionary doctor told her that which she already knew too well; and then we drew away while he spoke of other things, and we saw the look of dread and horror on the comely young face pass away and a faint smile part the lips that were already touched by the grim shadow of coming dissolution. Some of her village playmates and companions, with wet cheeks, bent their faces and touched her lips with theirs, and to each she sighed a low To Fa of farewell, and then she looked toward the shaking bent figure in the chair and beckoned him over. With noiseless tread he came, and then, with her very soul looking at him from her great, death-stricken eyes, she murmured, “Fear not, my father, my mouth is covered by the hand of Death; farewell!” *****
The sound of the soft lapping of the falling tide came through the open window as Luisa spoke again to Toë-o-le-Sasa, the Maid of Apia—“E Toe, e pae afea te tai?” (“When is the tide out?”) And the girl answered with a sob in her throat, “In quite a little while, O friend of my heart.”
“Ua lelei. (It is well.) And as the waters run out so does my soul float away!” and she turned her face to her mother's bosom. And as we went softly out from the room and stood upon the path with the lofty palm-plumes rustling above us, we saw the first swirling wave of the incoming tide ripple round Matautu Point and plash on Hamilton's beach. And from within the silent house answered the wail of Death.
THE FALLACIES OF HILLIARD
I.
With clenched hand grasping the two letters—the one that sank his last hope of saving his plantation, and the other that blasted his trust in human nature—Hilliard, the planter of Nairai Viwa, walked with quick, firm step to his house, and sat down to think awhile. The great cotton “burst-up” had ruined most men in Fiji, and although long delayed in his case the blow had crushed him utterly.
An angry flush tinged his set features for a few seconds as he re-read the curt, almost savage denial, by his father of the “couple of thousand” asked for. “A fool to resign his commission in the Service and go into a thing he knew nothing about, merely to humour the fantastic whim of a woman of fashion who will, no doubt, now sheer very clear of your wrecked fortunes.”
Ten minutes previously when Hilliard, who had thought his father would never see him go under for the sake of a couple of thou., had read these lines he had smiled, even with the despair of broken fortune at his heart, as he looked at the other letter yet unopened.