"May you wear it many years," said Sebastian with courteous dignity. "Dr. Gentian sets out for St. Augustine soon," went on Andrew, thinking aloud. "He will be gone some time. If I do not speak before then--" "Ah," said Sebastian and muttered something to himself in Spanish. "_Que?_" said Andrew, eagerly. He had not caught the words. "I said nothing," said Sebastian, holding out his hand before the door of his hut to try the direction of the wind. "The air is heavy. We will have rain before morning. Rain and thunder." "Nonsense, Sebastian," said Andrew and laughed. "The sky's as clear as a bell and it rained only two days ago." "Perhaps," said Sebastian, staring into a distance. His eyes were veiled. "But for all that, we will have rain soon enough, and thunder. There is thunder in the air, my friend--thunder coming up from the sea." PART TWO: _The Dazzling Net_ The strangeness of his friend's last speech bothered Andrew a little, on his way back to the house, but not long. The gradual veils of dusk blue, patched with silver, that evening drew solemnly across the sky were too calm and gentle to be flowered with anything more sullen than the palest stripes of Spring rain--a cool air blew from the inlet like a promise given in a whisper--it was, indeed, a night for love and the guitar. Andrew came up the grassy avenue that led to the house with that promise clutched tight in his hand like a Spanish coin. Tonight, he told himself as he had told himself so often, he would find out the color of his fortune, black or gold. In the interval after supper, when the Gentian ladies had withdrawn, he would speak to his surgeon Cæsar, and know his fate there, at least. Admitted, the Doctor was too liberal and modern a father to give away his daughter against her will--etiquette was etiquette--and it must never be said in the Floridas that a New Yorker lacked proper punctilio. But even if the Doctor did approve--what of Sparta herself? Andrew sifted a thousand little incidents of the past few months between his fingers like grains of sparkling sand. Here she had certainly smiled, yes--and there thanked him most graciously for turning over the leaves of her new song. But there she had been distant as a ghost, and there again, definitely satiric. This balanced that, and left him in troubled confusion. He was so absorbed in love-stricken calculations that he nearly ran into one of the servants, on the stairs, before he realized where he was.