contradiction.

"Yes, I think I do--_now_," Winthrop answered.

"I don't envy you your knowledge! _Poor_ Lucian Spenser--what could have
possessed him?"

"He? He's madly in love with her, of course."

"I'm glad at least you think he's a fool," said Aunt Katrina, applying
her vinaigrette disdainfully to her well-shaped nose.

"Fool? Not at all; he's only tremendously happy."

"The same thing--in such a case."

"I don't know about that. The question is, is it better to be
tremendously happy for a little while, and unreasonable; or to be
reasonable all the time, and never tremendously happy?"

"Oh, if you're going to talk _rationalism_--" said Aunt Katrina.

Immediately after her return from Norfolk, in the interval before Lucian
came, Garda sent for Adolfo Torres. When he appeared she begged him to
do her a favor, namely, to leave Charleston for the present.

"Is it that you wish me to return to Gracias?" asked Adolfo. "The place
is a desperation without you."

"You need not go to Gracias if you don't want to; but please go away
from here. Go to the Indian River," she suggested, with a sudden
inspiration.

"I will go to the Indian River certainly--if that is your wish," replied
the Cuban; "though I do not know"--this he added rather longingly--"what
harm I do here."

"No harm at all. But I want you to go." She smiled brightly, though
there was also a good deal of sympathy in her eyes as she surveyed his
lack-lustre countenance.

"That is enough--your wish. I go--I go at once." He took leave of her.

She called him back, and looked at him a moment. Then she said, "Yes,
go. And I will write to you."

This was a great concession, Adolfo felt it to be such.

The letter was long in coming; and when it did come at last, it dealt
him, like an actual hand, a prostrating blow. It was dated several days
after that morning which had seen the early marriage in St. Michael's,
and the signature, when his dazed eyes reached it, was one he did not
know--Edgarda Spenser.

The Cuban had received this note at dusk. He went out and wandered about
all night. At daylight he came in, dressed himself afresh and carefully,
and had his boots polished--a process not so much a matter of course on
the Indian River at that day as in some other localities. Next he said a
prayer, on his knees, in his rough room in the house where he was
lodged. Then he went out and asked the old hunter, his host, for the
favor of the loan of one