Island in the Dawn by Averil Ives Page A

you — as if at a word from him you’d be crawling to him, openly pleading for favors! Perhaps you don’t know how you looked tonight, but I saw you — and, quite frankly, I was horrified! I don’t know what Harry Whitelaw thought, and I can’t imagine what Paul Halloran himself thought. If you go on like that he’ll feel much safer if we leave the island.”
    “I don’t know what you mean!” Felicity gasped.
    “Don’t you?” Cassandra turned away. “Well, all I ask is — don’t do it again! If you’ve lost your gi rlish heart try and conceal the fact!”

 
    CHAPTER SIX
    THE next few days passed in a somewhat unreal fashion for Felicity, although Cassandra seemed to find them very satisfying, and to extract a good deal of enjoyment from them.
    After that first night of their arrival, when she made her intentions clear to her companion, and warned her, as it were, to keep “off the grass”, she settled down to treating Felicity very much as she had always done. She was casually interested in what she wore, what she did — when they had been apart for a short while she always wanted to know how Felicity had spent her time — and how she reacted to the island, and the new impressions they were receiving. Cassandra had always boasted that she could stand any amount of sun, and it seemed to be true in those days. She tanned deliciously, in spite of her red hair, and as she had quantities of the right sort of clothing she always looked delectable. She seemed to have been bo rn to recline in a temperature in which it was preferable to do nothing else.
    There was some wonderful bathing to be had in the warm, translucent water, and Cassandra was as much at home in the water as a fish. Felicity, not quite so much at home, envied her prowess with the surf board provided by their host, who was seldom, however, himself to be seen on the beach. He seemed to spend most of his time in the cool of the house, or on the veranda. Perhaps, because he had passed so many of his hours in the past year groping his way about the house and becoming accustomed to the feel of each article of highly-polished furniture, he had grown to look upon it as a sanctuary. He had developed a psychological dislike for wandering abroad, and this made Cassandra frown a little when she realized that it was a feeling that was not going to be easily uprooted.
    “Uncle James used to do a lot of sailing,” she told Felicity, “and of course this is the one perfect corner of the globe for people who enjoy that sport. I must say I do! I’ve been trying to find out whether the boathouse that is kept securely locked still contains the small yacht in which we used to have such fun, and if so, what sort of trim it’s in. Harry Whitelaw doesn’t seem to know, because he wasn’t here in Uncle James’s time, but he is keen on sailing and when the opportunity present itself I’m going to ask our host about the contents of the boathouse. If he hasn't got a boat he ought to get one, and maybe I can persuade him to do so if the boathouse is empty.”
    Felicity looked at her in obvious surprise.
    “But if we’re leaving on the steamer when it calls here.. .”
    Cassandra looked at her as if she was mildly amused.
    “But I haven’t said I’m leaving on the steamer when it calls here!”
    “No, but—but, surely, that is what we will have to do?”
    Cassandra, who had been washing her hands for lunch, picked up a comb and ran it through her hair.
    “Darling, I wish you wouldn’t be so naive!” she complained. “Do you honestly think I’ve come here all the way from England to pack up and go home again after a fortnight?” Wouldn’t that be rather a senseless thing to do?”
    “But we could go on somewhere else ... I mean, you could!” Felicity had already prepared herself for lunch, and she was standing regarding her very distant connection as she finished dealing with her hair and removed the stopper from the flagon of toilet-water and placed