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The Cypriani shuddered like a live thing and slid slowly forward. Four miles downstream, the river's banks grew a long mile apart, and the scenery was lonesome and a little wild. Here, as it chanced, there was flung across the water a thin, rocky island, well-wooded and of a respectable length.
You think that this girl is wrong-headed and obstinate, and that her father has a moral right to have her, over age or not. This discovery makes it a pretty serious business, but of course you've thought of all that. But will it be possible now?" "I have invited her," said Varney, with a light laugh, "to lunch on the Cypriani on Thursday with two or three other Hunston friends." "Well?"
Now his lips appeared sealed by a new and overwhelming reluctance; a resistless weakness saturated him through and through, seducing his will, filching away his very voice. The Cypriani rattled and wheezed, and her speed sharply slackened, but he did not notice it. His mind fastened on the stark fact of his impotence like a key in a lock: his heart leapt up to meet it.
Peter hurried on after the little reformer, and Varney, turning, continued his way down Main Street toward the river and the Cypriani, not entirely displeased, after all, that Peter had found some congenial diversion for the evening. The street was almost a desert. If the unmistakable sounds of revelry by night meant anything, nearly the whole population was behind him in the Ottoman bar.
Upon the shore, at the spot where the Cypriani's boat ordinarily landed, stood a tallish, stocky young man, looking at them cheerfully and swabbing his brow with a large blue handkerchief. Catching Varney's eye, he waved his hand with the handkerchief in it, and said, for the second time: "Hello, aboard the Cypriani!" Varney stepped to the rail, a faint smile on his lip. "Hello, there!
He wanted to do something of a violent, physical sort, the more grueling the better; and his task was to loll in an easy-chair under a pretty awning and inspect the landscape. The port side of the Cypriani was jammed as close into the island as the science of navigation made possible. Varney went over to the other side and sat down to wait.
Carstairs's husband, no matter who got hurt. Miss Carstairs should come to the Cypriani to-morrow as she had promised. In heaven or earth, on land or sea, there was no power which should keep him from having his will there. But then there was the Gazette. Smith, the clever, would doubt that the Cypriani had really gone back to New York.
And this was the way that he, Varney, had kept the coming of the Cypriani quiet in Hunston! "And think of the cursed bull luck of it!" cried Peter. "The most the rascal hoped to do was to ruin my plans for helping Hare by these dirty hints about both of us at the best to scare us away from Hunston. He never dreamed that he was knocking the bottom out of any private plans of yours!"
But all this was by day. Now night fell upon the poor little city and mercifully hid it from view. They had made the start too late for hurry to be any object. It was only a three hours' run for the Cypriani, but she took it slowly, using four. At half-past six o'clock, when their destination was drawing near, the two men went below and dined.
Clearly, here was a risk which he, as Mr. Carstairs's emissary, had no right to incur. The Cypriani was in no position to stand the fire of vindictive yellow journalism. Besides, there was the complicating matter of his own curious resemblance to somebody whom, it seemed, Hunston knew, and not too favorably. Considerably annoyed, Varney turned his face back toward the town.
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