"My dear, are you mad?"
"Oh no! I believe I have only just come to my senses. Mad? No. I have been mad. Now, when it is too late, I am sane. When it is too late—when I have just understood what I have done."
"Nonsense, child! What do you mean by being too late? Besides, you are doing what every girl does. You have accepted the hand of an old man who can give you a fine position and a great income and every kind of luxury. What more can a girl desire? When I die—you know already—there will be nothing—nothing at all for you. Marriage is your only chance."
At this moment the door opened, and Sir William himself appeared. He was not, although a man so rich, and therefore so desirable, quite a nice old man to look at—not quite such an old man as a girl would fall in love with at first sight; but perhaps under the surface there lay unsuspected virtues by the dozen. He was short and fat; his hair was white; his face was red; he had great white eyebrows; he had thick lips; his eyes rolled unsteadily, and his shoulders lurched; he had taken much more wine than is good for a man of seventy.
He held out both hands and lurched forward. "Florenshe," he said, thickly, "letsh sit down together somewhere. Letsh talk, my dear."
The girl slipped from the proffered hands and fled from the room.
"Whatsh matter with the girl?" said Sir William.
Out at sea, all by itself, somewhere about thirty miles from a certain good-sized island in a certain ocean, there lies another little island—an eyot—about a mile long and half a mile broad. It is a coral islet. The coral reef stretches out all round it, except in one or two places, where the rock shelves suddenly, making it possible for a ship to anchor there. The islet is flat, but all round it runs a kind of natural sea-wall, about ten feet high and as many broad; behind it, on the side which the wall protects from the prevailing wind, is a little grove of low, stunted trees, the name and kind of which the successive tenants of the island have never been curious to ascertain. I am therefore unable to tell you what they are. The area protected by the sea-wall, as low as the sea-level, was covered all over with long, rank grass. At the north end of the islet a curious round rock, exactly like a martello tower, but rather higher, rose out of the water, separated from the sea-wall by twenty or thirty feet of deep water, dark blue, transparent; sometimes rolling and rushing and tearing at the sides of the rock, sometimes gently lifting the seaweed that clung to the sides. Round the top of the rock flew, screaming all the year round, the sea-birds. Far away on the horizon, like a blue cloud, one could see land; it was the larger island, to which this place belonged. At the south end was a lighthouse, built just like all lighthouses, with low white buildings at its foot, and a flagstaff, and an enclosure which was a feeble attempt at a flower-garden. You may see a lighthouse exactly like it at Broadstairs. In fact, it is a British lighthouse. Half a mile from the lighthouse, where the sea-wall broadened into a wide, level space, there was a wooden house of four rooms—dining-room, salon, and two bedrooms. It was a low house, provided with a veranda on either side. The windows had no glass in them, but there were thick shutters in case of hurricanes. There were doors to the rooms, but they were never shut. Nothing was shut or locked up or protected. On the inner or land side there was a garden, in which roses (a small red rose) grew in quantities, and a few English flowers. The elephant-creeper, with its immense leaves, clambered up the veranda poles and over the roof. There was a small plot of ground planted pineapples, and a solitary banana-tree stood under the protection of the house, its leaves blown to shreds, its head bowed down.
Beyond the garden was a collection of three or four huts, where lived the Indian servants and their families.
The residents of this retreat—this secluded earthly paradise—were these Indian servants with their wives and children; the three lighthouse men, who messed together; and the captain, governor, or commander-in-chief, who lived in the house all by himself because he had no wife or family.