“_Shoo-ssh!_ Pat, get up and drive that humming-bird away. He won’t go for me, greedy little beast; and if he stays any longer I know he’ll over-eat himself. Well, you’d better brace yourself up for a blow, because married I mean to be some day. Who knows but what you’ll beat me in the race?” “I?” “Why not? When Duvernay died, Mabel became a widow.” “That,” said Onslow, “is the usual sequence of events.” “You know she never wanted to marry him.” “So I was led to understand some five years back. Yet marry him she did nevertheless, and that after due publication of banns. I might remark, Elsie, that that humming-bird you were interested in is still gorging himself out of those red flowers just on the other side of you.” “Some creatures never know when to stop. Now I do,” said Miss Kildare. “That’s the bell for dinner. I must go and tidy myself.” Meanwhile in that same Floridan hotel a certain Mr. Kent-Williams, a young gentleman of England, who was throwing poker dice at the bar with two friends for ante-prandial cocktails, was looking at the same subject from a different coign of view. He was a young gentleman who had not made a conspicuous success of himself at home, and had been deported to Florida with a view to extracting a fortune from orange growing. As on reaching the spot he found this was difficult of achievement, he wisely did not worry his brain with any vain attempts, but was content with living in inexpensive retirement under a palmetto-shuck for nineteen-twentieths of each quarter, and blossoming out during the remaining days in riotous living at the Point Sebastian hotel on the allowance which reached him from home. And with him were two others who had been softly nurtured, and who were also taking their quarterly nip of semi-civilization. “I tell you,” said Mr. Kent-Williams, “she’s a clinking fine specimen, that Kildare girl, and, by Jove, I ought to be a judge if any one is round here. Look! three sevens, first shot: good, I’ll keep these, and see if I can rattle out another. She’ll go to England and marry a duke as sure as fits, don’t you know. I wonder if Onslow will hitch on to the other sister. Looks like it, his coming here after the Duvernay beast turned up his toes. I never could stand Duvernay; not a ’Varsity man, don’t you know, and hadn’t been anywhere to school. Simply a bit of money, and thought he could swagger on that. By Jove! two bullets. That makes me a Full House, and I’ll stand on it. Collar the box, Willie, dear boy, and beat me if you can.”