I could not quite deny this, so I veered a little. “She is so lonely, Mr. Hoffman!” I said, coming round on another tack.
“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.
“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.
“Thank you,” said Sara, “I do not care to walk farther.”
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.”
“Is John Hoffman,” replied Sara, with a little curl of her lip. “Come, Martha, I want to show you some Arcadians.”