glowing arches of a succession of rainbows. In front of the window one
could see the quaint town, and here and there a picturesque group of
dusky natives, enjoying the blistering weather; and far to the right lay
the restless ocean, tossing its white mane in the sunshine.

Rosannah stood there, in her filmy white raiment, fanning her flushed and
heated face, waiting. A Kanaka boy, clothed in a damaged blue necktie
and part of a silk hat, thrust his head in at the door, and announced,
"'Frisco haole!"

"Show him in," said the girl, straightening herself up and assuming a
meaning dignity. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley entered, clad from head to
heel in dazzling snow--that is to say, in the lightest and whitest of
Irish linen. He moved eagerly forward, but the girl made a gesture and
gave him a look which checked him suddenly. She said, coldly, "I am
here, as I promised. I believed your assertions, I yielded to your
importune lies, and said I would name the day. I name the 1st of April
--eight in the morning. NOW GO!"

"Oh, my dearest, if the gratitude of a lifetime--"

"Not a word. Spare me all sight of you, all communication with you,
until that hour. No--no supplications; I will have it so."

When he was gone, she sank exhausted in a chair, for the long siege of
troubles she had undergone had wasted her strength. Presently she said,
"What a narrow escape! If the hour appointed had been an hour earlier
--Oh, horror, what an escape I have made! And to think I had come to
imagine I was loving this beguiling, this truthless, this treacherous
monster! Oh, he shall repent his villainy!"