"Is it the fierce and farouche duenna who wanted to annihilate me so
when I bade you adieu one night?" asked Reyburn, taking Lilian upon
his arm for a promenade upon the deck while they waited. "Let me see:
she was very young, was she not, and tall, and ugly? Is it her destiny
to watch over you? If she proves herself disagreeable, I will rig a
buoy and drop her overboard. After all, she is only a child. Ah no,"
he said, half under his breath, "the end is not yet."
"She is no longer a child," said Lilian, "Her father writes that he
hardly dares call her the same name, she is so changed. While I have
been withering up in the North, two equatorial years down here have
wrought upon her as they do upon the flowers. He says no Spanish woman
rivals her. Well, it will please--"
Just then Reyburn handed her the glass he had been using, and pointed
it for her.
"Can it be possible?" said Lilian. "Has Helen been transfigured to
that?" and something, she knew not what, sent a quiver through her and
made the image in the glass tremble--the image of a tall and shapely
girl whose round and perfect figure swayed to the boat's motion, lithe
as a reed to the wind, while she stood erect looking at something that
had been pointed out, and the boatmen paused with their oars in the
air; the image of a face on whose dark cheek the rose was burning, in
whose dark eye a veiled lustre was shining, around whose creamy brow
the raven hair escaped in countless tendril-like ringlets, and whose
smile, as she seemed to speak to some one while she stood in the low
sunset light, had a radiance of its own.
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