"I am sorry to say that opportunity is denied me. My cousin owns a steam yacht, which she has loaded with stores and medicines to be taken to Porto Rico, which island she believes has been quite forgotten by Miss Barton and her Red Cross movement. I shall be a passenger on board, and be secretly put ashore to fulfill my work."
A sudden change came over the girl's face--there was a drop of fifty degrees in temperature. A smiling summer sky had been blotted out by a rude wintry blizzard--the smile gave way to a look of pain, almost a frown. These passion flowers of the south know little of the art that consists in concealing the emotions--honest love or hate flashes quickly upon the countenance, for they brook no rivals.
"Your cousin--Miss Fairfax of Virginia, the daughter of a fortune, who is ready to cast all she owns at your feet--and you are to sail with her--you will be in her company ten days, two weeks perhaps. Santa Maria! then you will forget me, forget everything but her blue eyes that look like the Porto Rico skies at sunset."
It was almost a piteous wail to which she gave vent, and Roderic, his heart touched, realizing that the chance for which he yearned had come, sprang forward and threw an arm around the girl.
She had repulsed him before, but with a fierce jealousy raging in her heart she was no longer capable of such heroics.
So she yielded herself a willing captive to his embraces--her heart had ever been true, why should she not enjoy a fleeting spell of bliss?
Looking down into her confused face upon which his kisses were yet warm, he said, with a quiet assurance that did much to convince her:
"Sweetheart, I have known Cleo all my life. I love her as a sister, for she is a noble woman; but I never have given and never could give her an iota of the idolatrous passion that has filled my heart for you. You have believed me before--trust me now. I live only in the hope of wiping out my shameful action of the past, and of winning you for my own. Are you satisfied?"
"But she cares for you, Roderic; your fair cousin!"
"You declare so--I can hardly believe it."
"But I know it--she would make a far better wife for you than might a poor daughter of Porto Rico," weakly, almost piteously.