"I fancy Captain Beven will keep the gallant gentlemen enjoying themselves for some little time yet. He is a capital hand at a yarn, and with a box of prime Havanas which he says he secured from a trader who came out to our boat, to back up the basket of champagne Cleo sent aboard, I imagine he will hold them spellbound until the last cork is popped and the balance of the weeds sacrificed to the god, Moloch."
He knew from the uneasy movement of the girl that he had said something to arouse a new train of thought in her mind.
"Cleo—she is on yonder boat which I can see through the darkness—your cousin Cleo. And after having passed days in her society, how do you find your heart, Senor Roderic—has she still failed to creep in?" she asked, with a peculiar quivering spasm of pain in her voice.
"My God, Georgia, how can I make you believe I love, can love no woman on earth while you live? Is not my presence here at this moment proof sufficient? You fill my heart to absolute completion, so there in no room for another. Will you believe that I live and breathe and have my very being centered on you, heart of my heart and soul of my soul?"
These words, spoken in a low but tense tone, seemed to persuade her—the magnetism of his presence, the beloved tones of his voice, the very fervor of his impassioned gaze all served to convince the senorita that this man whose love had once been sufficient to kindle the fires of jealousy in his breast, was incapable of deception.
"I do believe—yes, I trust all my hopes of future happiness in your hands, for oh! Roderic if your love ever fails me, if it fades away like a dream, I shall surely die," she made response.
Of course he felt it his privilege and duty to swear by everything he held sacred, by the graves of his ancestors, after the Japanese fashion, that so long as earth held them both, he could neither change nor his passion grow cold.
And she believed him from that hour; implicit confidence dwelt within her trusting heart, and if this man ever did aught to destroy the faith she placed in his affection let him be accused from that day.
This was what Roderic was telling himself as he stood there holding her hand, the magnetic spark flowing from soul to soul.
He was ordinarily quite a matter of fact man, but even the most prosaic can be counted on to give way to unheard of romantic tendencies under the spur of such conditions.