the blackness of the night; and here a long narrow cove of a lagoon lay still and deep under the shadowy trees. The moonlight, streaming down between the pine tops, illumined the water and the sloping bank where Jolie stood. Beside her a huge grapevine hung from a pine, making a loop like a child's swing, and in this loop she seated herself ten feet from the water's edge.
She was weary of body, but her mind was wide awake. Her small hands clenched as she thought of Lachlan's impertinence—for so she deemed it. It was an age in England when beauty carried with it regal prerogatives. No young man had ever used such a tone to her before, had ever frowned at her, had ever presumed to scold her. It had remained for a young barbarian of the American wilderness to flout her authority, to reprimand her like a schoolgirl.
Her thoughts passed quickly to Gilbert Barradell—to certain facts that she had learned that morning from Almayne. Lachlan, mindful of his promise to Falcon, had made known to her only part of what had happened on the Good Fortune. What he had omitted seemed to her more important than what he had told.
Most important of all, in her mind, was Falcon's reference to Chief Concha's daughter. Almayne had merely touched upon this incident, which he seemed to regard as of slight importance, in telling her the story of Lachlan's first visit to the brig; but she had questioned him closely regarding it, and she had
