“Happy!” the girl echoed the word with an incredulous smile.  “Why, dearest, what has come to you?  You never needed to ask me such a question before!  Don’t you know there isn’t a girl in Barbadoes who has been so thoroughly spoiled, and has found the spoiling so sweet?  Do I look more than usually mournful to-day that you should think I am pining away with grief?” She looked up at him with a roguish laugh.

He smiled and laid his finger caressingly on the dimpled chin.  “Dear little bird!” he said tenderly; “but when this dimple captivates the heart of some one, Vad, you will fly away and leave the poor father in the empty nest.”

Her color glowed softly through the olive skin.  She threw her arms around his neck and laid her face against his breast.  “You know better!” she exclaimed passionately.  “You know I wouldn’t leave you for all the ‘some ones’ in the world!”

Her father caught her close.  “Poor little lass!” he said with a sigh.

The girl lifted her head and looked at him anxiously.  “Dearest, what is the matter?  I am sure you are not well!  You have been sitting too long at that tiresome writing.”

“Yes, that is it, darling,” he said with a sudden change of tone.  “Writing always does give me the blues.  I think the man who invented the art should have been put in a pillory for the rest of his natural life.  Blow your whistle for Sam to bring the horses and we will go for a ride along the beach.”

Evadne lifted the golden whistle which hung at her girdle and blew the call which the well-trained servant understood.  “Fi, dearest!” she said, “if there were no writing there would be no books, and what would become of our beautiful evenings then?  But I am glad you do not have to write much, since it tires you so.  What has it all been about, dear?  Am I never to know?”

“Some day, perhaps, little Vad.  But do not indulge in the besetting sin of your sex, or, like the mother of the race, you may find your apple choke you in the chewing.”

Evadne shook her finger at him.  “Naughty one!  As if you were not three times as curious as I!  And when it comes to waiting,—­you should have named me Patience, sir!”

Her father laughed as he kissed her, then he tied on her hat, threw on his own, and hand-in-hand like two children they ran down the veranda steps to where the groom stood waiting with the horses.

CHAPTER II.

A month full of happy days had flown by when Evadne and her father returned one morning from a long tramp in search of specimens.  A delightful afternoon had followed, he in a hammock, she on a low seat beside him, arranging, classifying and preparing their morning’s spoil for the microscope.  Suddenly she turned towards him with a troubled face.

“Dearest, how pale you look!  Are you very tired?”

“It is only the heat,” he answered lightly.  “We had a pretty stiff walk this morning, you know.”