The Port of Adventure

hovering in the doorway between the dim, cool hall and th

orn in Spain and made her greatest successes in the City of Mexico-Ca

her, as stage lights are turned on for the heroine of a play; and there was something about Carmen which su

it her, a background as expensive as picturesque; a millionaire husband had paid for it. There were many verandas and pergolas, but this immense out-of-doors room had wide archways instead of pillars, cur

lery, descending to a terrace floored with the same brick, which held dim t

ted a roof of the same gray-green, starred in a vague pattern with the jewels of sunset. Carmen did not see the beauty of the magic temple, though she was conscious of her own. She hated to think that Nick Hilliard should keep her waiting, and there was cruelty in the clutch she made at a cluster of orange blosso

n't Nic

eander, and preferred to come by it, though it was longer. He ought to have been with her at least ten minutes ago, for she had asked him to come early. She had said in the letter which she gave old Simeon Harp to take to Nick, "This is

he second reason concerned the anniversary of a certain event. Some people would have called the event a tragedy, but to Ca

ing gown. She adored jewellery, and had been almost a slave to her love for it, until she began to value something else more-something which, unfortunately, her money could not buy, though she hoped and prayed her face might win it. She had quantities of diamonds, emeralds, and rubies-her favourite stones-but instinct had told her that even on

to-day, a year this morning, so it was already more than a year-she had ceased to be a slave, and she had had everything she wanted, except one thing. Perhaps she had that too, yet she was not sure: and she could hardly wait to be sure. Nobody but Nick could make her so, and he ought to be in joyful haste to do it. He wa

ok a step forward, then stopped. It was not Nick Hilliard after all, but old Simeon Harp, the squirrel poisoner, coming from the direction of Nick's ranch, bringing her

sharply, as the queer, gnarled fig

nly I was over at Nick's finishin' up a bit of my work, and he said, would I tell you he was sorry to be late

fate he probably deserved. But she had amused herself, and saved him. Sick and forlorn, he had been nursed back to something like health in the house of one among many gardeners. Since then he had been her slave, her dog. He called her "my lady," and she rather liked the name. She liked the worshipping admiration in the red-lidded eyes which had once been handsome, and she believed, what he often said, that there was nothing on earth he wouldn't do for her. Once or twice the thought had pierced her brain like a sharp needle, that perhaps he had already done a thing for her-a great thing. But it was better not to know, not even to guess. Fortunately the idea had apparently never occurred to any one else, and of course it never could now. Yet there had been a very curious look in Simeon Harp's eyes a year ago

not very sternly, for she was pleased to have news from the other r

xplained Simeon, huskily. "But I won

her husband, though it seemed practically certain. Besides, if Hilliard was "Nick" to everybody, it was a token of his popularity; and Nick himself was the last man to forget that he had risen to his present place by climbing up from the lowest rung of the ladder-the ladder of poverty. She

th eyes dimmed by drink and years. He had so settled down on his rheumatic old joints that he had become dwa

knows you, it seems to me, my lady. And you were never as handsome as you are this night. It warm

even a squirrel poisoner's prais

"I don't mean to have another for a good long tim

ky voice for the last words. But Carmen heard them. "You remember that!" she

veral good reasons-why I shan't forget that as long as I liv

of it, Sim!" she

gs bein' so bad made what happened a matter for rejoicin' and not

houldn't even have worn mourning, if Madame Vestris, the great palmist in San Francisco, hadn't told me it would bring

the squirrels I've killed without the dope to make the grand automobile coat I've been promisin'

pe so!" s

g his gray head in the direction of the oleander p

e forgot Simeon Harp, and did not even see him as he hobbled away, pulling on to his head the mot