The color ebbed from Iris's face, but she said at once:
"I shall be ready, uncle dear. I promised Dom Corria to look after the hospital appliances that are so much needed by the poor soldiers, but the Senhora De Sylva will attend to that much more effectually than I."
"Good! Then that's settled."
David pursed out his thick lips with a sigh of relief. Though he had watched the spoken record of the Andromeda and her company for craftier hints than was suspected by his fellow travelers, he was not deaf to Coke's appreciation of Hozier. The silence of his niece on that same topic was alarming, but the position could not be so bad if she was willing to leave for the coast without seeing him again. No secret was made of Philip's errand into the interior. The homeward-bound cavalcade would be at Pesqueira ere he returned to the finca.
Carmela, of course, did not believe in a woman's complacency in such a vital matter. She was ever prepared to spring, to strike, to wrench their plans to suit her own ends; but, contrive as she might, she could not succeed in leaving Iris alone with Bulmer. Full of device, she was foiled at each turn. The day wore, the sun went down, the starlit sky made beautiful a parched earth, but never a word in privacy did Iris exchange with her husband-to-be. Carmela's malice was not hidden from her, but she despised it. There was some ease for her tortured brain in defeating it. If the Senhora De Sylva had only understood how thoroughly the Englishwoman loathed her petty jealousy, it was possible that the few remaining hours of their enforced intimacy might have been rendered less irksome.
But, by this time, fate had gathered the slackened strings of their destinies. Thenceforth they became her puppets. Permitted for a little while to play the tragi-comedy of life according to their own inclinations, now the stern edict had gone forth that they were to act their allotted parts in one of those fascinating if blood-stained dramas that the history of nations so often puts on the stage. The future is the most cunning of playwrights. No man may tell what the next scene shall be. And no man, nor any woman, could guess the mad revel of hate and war that would rage that night around the placid homestead of Las Flores.
Behind the veranda was a huge ballroom, converted, by the exigencies of the campaign, into a dining hall for the many inmates of the finca. The Brazilian ladies, the sailors, some sick or wounded officers who were not confined to bed, even the household servants, took their meals there in common. Supper was served soon after nine o'clock. When cigars and cigarettes were lighted, and the company broke up into laughing, gossiping, noisy groups, the place looked more like a popular Continental cafe than a room in a private mansion.
Though De Sylva, General Russo, San Benavides, and some score of members of the President's staff who usually dined at the finca, were now absent, there was no lack of lively chatter. A very Babel of tongues mixed in amity. The prevalent note was one of cheery animation. Carmela exerted herself to win popularity, and a President's daughter need not put forth very strenuous efforts in that direction to be acclaimed by most.
Iris was listening, with real interest, to Verity's description of the finding of Macfarlane in the Andromeda's boat by a Cardiff-bound collier three days after he had drifted away from Fernando Noronha.
"The yarn kem to us through the Consul at Pernambuco," he said. "Evidently, from wot you tell me, it's all right. Poor ole Mac 'ad a bad time afore 'e was picked up, but 'e was alive, an' I'm jolly glad of it, for 'e'll be a first-rate witness w'en this business comes up in court."