"I am very grateful. I had not thought much about Aunt Emily's opposition, but no doubt she will turn me out of Bath House. You may see me at the Grange to-night."
"Send one of the grooms with a note as soon as you have had the inevitable scene. I only hope the result will be that I send the coach for you to-day. I do hope you'll be happy. Why shouldn't you? Byam Warner would not be the first man to settle down in matrimony. But can you stand living your life on Nevis."
"I should have wished to live here had I never met Byam Warner."
"Oh--well--you are not to be pitied. I shall paint you while you are at the Grange, all in white--only in a smarter gown--in this setting, and with those blue butterflies circling about your head. You cannot imagine what a picture you made. What a pity I frightened them away. Now, mind you write me at once."
She kissed her radiant friend with a sigh, doubting that even conquest of Lord Hunsdon would make herself look like a goddess, and rode on.
Anne went her way, even more slowly than before. She was in no haste to face Mrs. Nunn, and she would re-live the morning hours before other mere mortals scattered those precious images in her mind. Warner had taken her up to his hut concealed in a hollow of the mountain and surrounded on all sides by the jungle, then, while she sat on the one chair the establishment boasted, he had cooked their breakfast, a palatable mess of rice and plantains, and the best of coffee. They had consumed it with great merriment under a banana tree, then washed the dishes in a brook. Afterward he had shaken down several young cocoanuts and they had pledged themselves in the green wine. Then they had returned to the shade and talked--what had they not talked about? Anne opened the sealed book of the past five years of which he had been the hero. He read it with amazement and delight, but contrite that he had received no message from that turbulent young brain by the North Sea. But he atoned by confessing that he had recognised her as his own the moment he laid eyes on her, that she was all and more than he had once modelled in the mists of his brain. He demanded every detail of that long union, so imaginative and so real, and told Anne that never before had a poet had the fortune to meet a woman who was a locked fountain of poetry, yet who revealed the sparkling flood by a method of her own with which no words could compete.