Again the four, now formally betrothed, separate into twos, taking opposite sides of the aerial garden.
They converse about the far future—that awaiting them at Cadiz. But the ladies cannot overlook, or forget, some perils more proximate. The retrospect of the day throws a shadow over the morrow. That encounter with De Lara and Calderon cannot end without further action. Not likely; and both aunt and niece recall it, questioning their now affianced lovers—adjuring them to refrain from fighting.
These reply, making light of the matter, declaring confidence in their own strength and skill, whatever be the upshot—at length, so assuring their sweethearts, that both believe them invincible, invulnerable. What woman who does not believe the same of him who holds her heart?
Time passes; the last moments speed silently, sweetly, in the old, old ecstasy of all-absorbing, time-killing love.
Then the inevitable “Adios!” though sounding less harshly by favour of the appended phrase—“Hasta Cadiz!”
Chapter Twenty Three.
On Pleasure Bent.
The clocks of San Francisco are striking the hour of ten. The moon has risen over Monte Diablo, and sends her soft mellow beams across the waters of the bay, imparting to their placid surface a sheen as of silver. The forms of the ships at anchor are reflected as from a mirror; their hulls, with every spar, stay, and brace, even to the most delicate rope of their rigging, having a duplicated representative in the fictitious counterfeit beneath. On none is there any canvas spread; and the unfurled flags do not display their fields, but hang motionless along masts, or droop dead down over taffrails.