For a time, to Tacita, it had seemed as if San Salvador had opened its walls to admit a salt wave from the outer world; but the gap closed again while Dylar attended to her with a careful solicitude sufficiently reassuring as to his regard for her, but with no suggestion of fondness. He was a kind friend; and the cheerfulness and decision of his manner gave her strength.
“He is not one,” she thought, “to need the strength of a woman’s will to keep him in the path of duty. And she—I am glad that Iona does not love him. It would break my heart, if she did.”
CHAPTER XIX.
Iona went away with a stately step, but with a brain on fire. It was only when near the Arcade that she quickened her steps; and when inside the door, she ran upstairs.
Having found Elena, “I am going out to the Olives for a few days,” she said, “and I want to start at once for the Pines. Will you have Isadore called to go with me? I will meet him at the water-gate.”
She waited for no reply, but hastened to her own room. In a few minutes she came out dressed in the gray costume of labor.
“Everything is ready,” Elena said, meeting her, and expressed neither surprise nor curiosity.
The sun had set, and it was night when Iona met the men who had been sent up to attend her. But she would suffer them to go no farther than the water-gate.
“I know the road well,” she said, “and am in no danger. When at daylight you see the signal that I am at the Pines, you will turn the gate again. It will be sooner done if you stay here.”
They obeyed unwillingly, and she went over the wild mountain road alone, guiding her donkey with a careful hand, and conscious only of a dull discomfort. It was midnight when she reached the Pines.