“Do I do what on purpose, Miss Martha? Tell anecdotes?” “You know what I mean very well, Mr. Hoffman. Her sadness was real for the moment; why wound her?” “Wound her! Is a woman wounded by a trifling joke?” “But her nature is peculiarly sensitive.” “You mistake her, I think, Miss Martha. Sara St. John is coated over with pride like an armor; she is invulnerable.” I could not quite deny this, so I veered a little. “She is so lonely, Mr. Hoffman!” I said, coming round on another tack. “Because she so chooses.” “It may not be ‘choose.’ Mr. Hoffman, why should _you_ not try to--” Here I looked up and caught the satirical smile on my companion’s face, and, vexed with myself, I stopped abruptly. “You are a good friend, Miss Martha.” “She has need of friends, poor girl!” “Why poor?” “In the first place she _is_ poor, literally.” “Poverty is comparative. Who so poor as Mokes with his millions?” “Then she is poor in the loss of her youth; she is no longer young, like Iris.” “‘Oh, saw ye not fair Iris going down into the west’--a minute ago,” said John, glancing after a vanishing blue ribbon. A suspicion, and not for the first time either, crossed my mind. “So it is little Iris, after all,” I thought. “Oh, man, man, how can you be so foolish!” Then aloud, “I must go forward and join the others,” I said, with a tinge of annoyance I could not conceal. John looked at me a moment, and then strode forward. I watched him; he joined Sara. I followed slowly. “There is a second tomb farther down the island,” he was saying as I came up; “it is even more venerable than the first; a square inclosure of coquina, out of which grows an ancient cedar-tree which was probably planted, a mere slip, after the grave was closed. Will you walk that way with me, Miss St. John?” And with bared head he stood waiting for her answer. [Illustration: ORANGE WALK.] “Thank you,” said Sara, “I do not care to walk farther.” He bowed and left her. Half an hour later, as Sara and I were strolling near the far point of the island, we caught through the trees a glimpse of Iris seated in the low, crooked bough of a live-oak, and at her feet John Hoffman, reclining on the white tufted moss that covered the ground. “Absurd!” I said, angrily. “Why absurd? Is she not good and fair? To me there is something very bewitching about Iris Carew. She is the most graceful little creature; look at her attitude now, swinging in that bough! and when she walks there is a willowy suppleness about her that makes the rest of us look like grenadiers. Then what arch dark eyes she has, what a lovely brunette skin, the real brune! Pretty, graceful little Iris, she is always picturesque, whatever she does.” “But she is a child, Sara, while he--” “Is John Hoffman,” replied Sara, with a little curl of her lip. “Come, Martha, I want to show you some Arcadians.” “Arcadians?”