When the sails were up and the yacht was running merrily through the water, Montesma went back to Lady Lesbia, and they two sat side by side, gilded and glorified in the vivid lights of sunrise, talking as they had never talked before, her head upon his shoulder, a smile of ineffable peace upon her lips, as of a weary child that has found rest.

They were sailing for Havre, and at Havre they were to be married by the English chaplain, and from Havre they were to sail for the Havana, and to live there ever afterwards in a fairy-tale dream of bliss, broken only by an annual visit to Paris, just to buy gowns and bonnets.  Surrendered were all Lesbia’s ambitious hopes—­forgotten—­gone; her desire to reign princess paramount in the kingdom of fashion—­her thirst to be wealthiest among the wealthy—­gone—­forgotten.  Her dreams now were of the dolce far niente of a tropical climate, a boudoir giving on the Caribbean sea, cigarettes, coffee, nights spent in a foreign opera house, the languid, reposeful existence of a Spanish dama—­with him, with him.  It was for his sake that she had modified all her ideas of life.  To be with him she would have been content to dwell in the tents of the Patagonians, on the wild and snow-clad Pampas.  A love which was strong enough to make her sacrifice duty, the world, her fair fame as a well-bred woman, was a love that recked but little of the paths along which her lover’s hand was to lead.  For him, to be with him, she renounced the world.  The rest did not count.

The summer hours glided past them.  The Cayman was far out at sea; all the other yachts had vanished, and they were alone amidst the blue, with only a solitary three-master yonder, on the edge of the horizon.  More than once Lesbia had talked of going below to change her ball gown for the attire of everyday life; but each time her lover had detained her a little longer, had pleaded for a few more words.  Lady Kirkbank would be astir presently, and there would be no more solitude for them till they were married, and could shake her off altogether.  So Lesbia stayed, and those two drank the cup of bliss, hushed by the monotonous sing-song of the sea, the rhythm of the swinging sails.  But now it was broad morning.  The hour when society, however late it may keep its revels overnight, is apt to awaken, were it only to call for a cup of strong tea and to turn again on the pillow of lassitude, after that refreshment, like the sluggard of Holy Writ.  At ten o’clock the sun sent his golden arrows across the silken coverlet of her berth and awakened Lady Kirkbank, who opened her eyes and looked about languidly.  The little cabin was heaving itself up and down in a curious way; Mr. Smithson’s cigar-cases were sloping as if they were going to fall upon Lady Kirkbank’s couch, and the looking-glass, with all its dainty appliances, was making an angle of forty-five degrees.  There was more swirling and washing of water against the hull than ever Georgie Kirkbank had heard in Cowes Roads.