So this was the end of her dream. Bitter-sweet it had been, and long drawn out, but forthwith she must awake to the gray actualities of life.
She felt Carmela dragging her onward, irresistibly, vindictively. She saw, as through a mist, David Verity's fiery-hued face, and heard his harsh accents. Yes, there was no mistake. Here was Bootle transported to Brazil, Linden House to Las Flores!
"By gum, lass," he was bellowing, with a touch of real sentiment in his voice, "you've given us a rare dance afore we caught up wi' you. But 'ere you are, bright as a cherry, an' 'ere is Dickey an' meself come to fetch you. Dash my wig, there's life in the old dogs yet, or we'd never ha' bin able to ride forty mile through this God-forgotten country. An' damme if that isn't Coke, red as a lobster. Jimmie, me boy, put it there! Man, but you're a dashed long way from port!"
Happily, Iris was too stunned to betray herself. She extended a hand to the sun-browned, white-haired old man standing by her uncle's side.
"I am very glad to see you, Mr. Bulmer," she said simply. And, in that hour of searing agony, she meant it, for it is easier to look back on suffering than to await it, and she had been living in dread of this meeting for many a weary day.
Two thousand five hundred years ago the prophet Jeremiah expressed incredulity as to the power of an Ethiopian to change his skin or a leopard his spots. The march of the centuries has fully justified the seer's historic doubt, so it makes but slight demand on the critical faculties to assume that two years' residence in Europe had not cooled the hot southern blood flowing in Carmela's veins.
She had hated Iris before she set eyes on her; she hated her now that she had seen her rare beauty; she gloated on the suffering inflicted by the presence of the faded old man who claimed her as his bride. Though it was of the utmost importance that she should hasten to her father, she returned to Las Flores in her rival's company, their arms linked in seeming friendship, and the Brazilian girl's ears alert to treasure every word that told of Bulmer's wooing.
Therein she greatly miscalculated the true gentility of one whom his cronies described as "a rough diamond." Bulmer realized that Iris was overwrought. Vague but sensational items in newspapers had prepared him in some measure for the story of her wanderings since last they met in quiet, old-fashioned Bootle. He felt that she was altered, that their ways in life had deviated with a sharpness that was not to be brought back into parallel grooves simply because he had traveled many thousands of miles to find her.