CHAPTER XII
THE LURE OF GOLD
"Philip, I want to tell you something."
"Something pleasant?"
"No."
"Then why tell me?"
"Because, unhappily, it must be told. I hope you will forgive me, though I shall never forgive myself. Oh, my dear, my dear, why did we ever meet? And what am I to say? I—well, I have promised to marry another man."
"Disgraceful!" said Philip.
Though Iris's faltered confession might fairly be regarded as astounding, Philip was unmoved. The German captain had given him a cigar, and he was examining it with a suspicion that was pardonable after the first few whiffs.
"Philip dear, this is quite serious," said Iris, momentarily withdrawing her wistful gaze from the far-away line where sapphire sea and amber sky met in harmony. Northeastern Brazil is a favored clime. Bad weather is there a mere link, as it were, between unbroken weeks of brilliant sunshine, when nature lolls in the warmth and stirs herself only at night under the moon and the stars. That dingy trader, the Unser Fritz, ostensibly carrying wool and guano from the Argentine to Hamburg, was now swinging west at less than half speed over the long rollers which alone bore testimony to the recent gale. Already a deep tint of crimson haze over the western horizon was eloquent, in nature's speech, of land ahead. At her present pace, the Unser Fritz would enter the harbor at Pernambuco on the following morning.