‘Why, my friend Hawthorn here comes from Trinidad too, so you ought to be neighbours; though, as he hasn’t been there himself for a great many years, I daresay you won’t know one another.’
‘Oh, everybody in Trinidad knows everybody else, of course,’ Nora answered, half turning to Edward. ‘It’s such a little pocket colony, you know, that we’re all first-cousins to one another through all the island. I’m not acquainted with all the people in Trinidad myself, naturally, because I haven’t been there since I was a baby, almost; but my father would be perfectly sure to know him, at anyrate, I’m confident. I don’t think I ever heard the name of Hawthorn before—connected with Trinidad, I mean; in fact, I’m sure not.—Do your people live out there still, Mr Hawthorn, or have they settled in England?’
‘My father and mother are still in the island,’ Edward answered, a little uncomfortably. ‘My father is Mr James Hawthorn, of Agualta Estate, a place at the north side of Trinidad.’
‘Agualta Estate,’ Nora replied, turning the name over with herself once more dubiously, ‘Agualta Estate. I’ve certainly heard the name of the place, I’m sure; but never of your people until this minute. How very strange.’
‘It’s a long time since you’ve been in the island, you say,’ Noel put in suggestively, ‘and no doubt you’ve forgotten Mr Hawthorn’s father’s name. He must be pretty well known in Trinidad, I should think, for he’s an Honourable, you know, and a member of the local Legislative Council.’
Nora looked decidedly puzzled. ‘A member of the Legislative Council,’ she said in some surprise. ‘That makes it stranger still. My papa’s a member of Council too, and he knows everybody in the place, you know—that is to say, of course, everybody who’s anybody; and poor mamma used always to write me home the chattiest letters, all about everybody and everybody’s wife and daughters, and all the society gossip of the colony; and then I see so many Trinidad people when they come home; and altogether, I really thought I knew, by name at least, absolutely every one in the whole island.’
‘And this proves you must be mistaken, Miss Dupuy,’ Noel put in carelessly; for he was half jealous that his own special and peculiar discovery in pretty girls should take so much interest in Edward Hawthorn. ‘But anyhow, you’ll know all about him before very long, I’ve no doubt, for Mr Hawthorn is going to take a judgeship in the uttermost parts of the earth, even Trinidad. He’ll be going out there, no doubt, from what he tells me, in a month or so from now.’
‘Going out there!’ Nora cried. ‘Oh, how nice. Why, I shall be going out, too, in the end of June. How delightful, if we should both happen to sail in the same steamer together!’
‘I should envy him the voyage immensely,’ said Harry. ‘But you don’t mean to say, Miss Dupuy, you’re really going to bury yourself alive in the West Indies?’
‘Oh, I don’t call it burying alive, Mr Noel; it’s perfectly delightful, I believe, from what I remember. Summer all the year round, and dancing, with all the doors and windows open, from September to April.’