The Gorgeous Isle

She was skirting the town, keeping close to the shore, but she paused again, involuntarily, to look in the direction of that baker's dwelling, through the window of which, some months since, Byam Warner, mad with drink, had precipitated himself one night, shrieking for the handsome wife of the indignant spouse. For this escapade he had lain in jail until a coloured planter had bailed him out--for the white Creoles thought it a good opportunity to emphasize their opinion of him--and although he had been dismissed with a fine, the judge had delivered himself of a weighty reprimand which was duly published in the local paper. He had lain in prison only forty-eight hours, but he had lain in prison, and the disgrace was indelible. No wonder he had been ashamed to hold up his head, had hesitated so long to accept Lady Hunsdon's invitation. The wonder was it had been extended. Anne shrewdly inferred it never would have been in London, no matter what the entreaties of Lord Hunsdon, but on this island many laws were relaxed and many a sin left behind.

Then her thoughts swung to his indubious assertion that he had emerged from his lair merely that he might meet her. She recalled the admiration in his eyes, the desperate effort with which he had overcome his shyness and approached her. What irony, if after having been ignorant, unsuspecting, of her existence during all those years of her worship, when she had been his more truly than in many a corporeal marriage, he should love her now that she could only think of him with pity and contempt. It gave her a fierce shock of repulsion that he might wish to marry her, dwell even in thought upon possessing her untouched youth after the lewdness of his own life. She must crush any such hope in its bulb if she would not hate him and do him ill when she sincerely wished him well. She reviewed the beaux of Bath House for one upon whom she might pretend to fix her affections, and at once, before Warner's inclination ripened into passion; but the very thought of entering into a serious flirtation with any of those tight-waisted, tight-trousered exquisites induced a sensation of ennui, and with Hunsdon she did not care to trifle. He might be wearisome, but he was good and sincere, and Lady Mary should have him were it in her power to bring about that eminently proper match.

It was at this point in her reflections that she found herself opposite the house of the poet.