The braid finished, she tossed it back, and caught it lightly into a loop, the motion revealing a pair of round white arms, to which the hands and wrists looked like colored gauntlets. Then she unfolded her precious Indian relic of tarnished red and gold, and bound it straightly about her head, half-covering the forehead, so that the long, fringed ends hung behind, and a loose fold fell over each ear. Beholding her in that guise, Captain Cary thought that she looked fitter for some oriental scene than for this crude corner of a crude land. "She might be a stolen child stained with gypsy-wort," he said to himself. But she was Gypsy only in color. No wild fires burned in her face; her cool eyes looked out calm and observant; her mouth was gently closed. The very shape of her features expressed tranquillity. The sailor found himself much interested in this little girl. Besides that her appearance pleased him, his good-will had been bespoken; for on one of those days when their ship had lain becalmed in southern waters, Dick had told him all her story. Listening to it, half-asleep, as to something that might be fact and might be fancy, all the scene about him had entwined itself with the history and with the heroine's character. The solid golden day, shut down over a sea whose soft pulses told of perfect repose; the wide-eyed, radiant night, which seemed every moment on the point of breaking into music far and near, a fine, clear music of countless sweet bells with almost human tongues--they formed the background on which her image floated. Seeing her did not dispel but rather strengthened the illusion. Something golden in her hair, something tranquil in her face, something expectant in her eyes--all were like. The rough giant of a sailor mused tenderly over this as he sent their boat forward with powerful strokes, and watched Edith Yorke bind on her Egyptian _coiffure_. They did not row to the wharf, where the steamer had already arrived, but to a place a few rods above, where the sea had taken a good semicircular bite out of the land. Here a straggling bit of dilapidated woods had been allowed to remain by the vandals who had turned all the rest to grass and pasture, and a mossy ledge broke the teeth of the soft, gnawing waves. Edith stepped lightly on shore. She was young, healthy, brave, and ignorant, and pain, though it called forth her tears, was stimulating to her. That pang had not yet come which could cut her heart in twain and let all the courage out. "You are spry," Captain Cary said, smiling down upon her. She smiled faintly in return, but said nothing. Mrs. Rowan needed assistance at either hand. She had been broken by pain. They stood awhile in the grove, Dick and the captain making some business arrangements. The _Halcyon_ was to remain four weeks at Seaton, and it was agreed that Dick should have that time to get his mother settled. Then the ship would touch at New York, where he would embark for the East again.