Violence she both feared and abhorred, and now, in the wane of her beauty, she was easily content with such crumbs of money profit as could be picked up by an easy code of a plastic surface morality which covered only her petty intrigues.
Loyal to Irma Gulyas, Randall Clayton dared not question the poor mock duenna; in fact, her jargon vocabulary would have failed her, but there had been no deceit in the sympathetic tears which clung to Madame Raffoni's eyelids.
Seated on a half-burned spar, there where the roar of the restless waves reached their ears, with her face veiled, the Magyar witch awaited her all unsuspicious lover. The golden sunset faded now far in the west, the piled up purple clouds were turning blacker, and around them
"The mists arose, the waters swelled,"
"Gulls screamed, their flight recalling."
The woman's heart was racked with the deceit which had entrapped a man she now madly loved.
The freshening wind was driving the black smoke of the steamers, far out at sea, in long funereal wreaths, athwart the foaming wake, and the silver-sailed schooners began to reef, in anticipation of the coming storm.
An infinite tenderness seized upon Randall Clayton as he motioned to Madame Raffoni to leave them, and then took that beloved head to its shelter upon his breast.
His heart panted for the day when they could be all in all to each other. He felt the clouding spell of some mysterious enmity descending upon them, and clouding their love as he kissed the white and trembling hands which had so nervously clasped his own. For Irma Gluyas feared for her own life. She dared not betray the tiger-like Fritz Braun, whose veiled scheme of plunder or blackmail she could not fathom.
Hitherto all had gone well with them, in their merry will-o'-the-wisp game with Irma's jealous unknown guardians, with his concealed enemies.
But Clayton well knew that no mere pretense would baffle Arthur
Ferris' thorough knowledge of all of his past social habits.