“Forgive me, madame, for thus taking your husband from you, but, alas! I have orders which must be obeyed.”
“No apology is needed, m’sieur,” she replied, with a slight sigh. “My husband’s honeymoon has been brief indeed, but, as one convicted of a serious crime, what can he expect? We must both wait. Nothing further need be said.”
“And you have followed him here—from Paris?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, what devotion! Madame, truly yours is a cruel separation, and you have my heartfelt sympathy. Adieu.”
“Thanks, m’sieur; adieu,” she said brokenly; but the officer had already passed out, and was beyond hearing.
Drawing herself up suddenly, and bowing stiffly to the priest, she left the chapel without deigning to thank him.
Outside the furnace heat of sunshine was intense.
The fierce, glaring sun reflected upon the unruffled surface of the Pacific Ocean, and beat down mercilessly on the white road that stretched away for a mile or so to Noumea, the chief town of the penal settlement, which is altogether a curious place, where society is composed chiefly of recidivistes and warders, and where in the Rue Magenta, one rubs shoulders with murderers, thieves, and notorious conspirators, the scum of French prisons, who, having completed their term of hard labour, have developed into colonists, respectable and otherwise.
Hesitating on the threshold, undecided whether to return to the town or take the road which led up the steep hill to where the black shaft and windlass marked the mouth of the convict’s mine, she quickly resolved upon the former course, and, strolling leisurely down to where the waveless sea lazily lapped the shingly beach, continued her way under the welcome shadow of some great rocks overgrown by tropical vegetation, and rendered picturesque by palms, acacias, and giant azaleas in full bloom.