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Williams turned slightly, not facing her, but standing as if ready to walk away. His hard gaze went to her from an angle. He said nothing; there was no interest, not even curiosity, nothing but raw discourtesy.

A trace of uneasiness, doubt perhaps, shadowed her face and was gone. She smiled, and, raising both gloved hands half out to him, said in Samoan: "My captain, I am Tom Combe's daughter—Nada!"

McGuire now saw how in vivacity and tone she resembled the island girls, though in appearance she was very unlike a native; and he understood her amused self-assurance, too. He knew of her, of both the Combe girls.

He had seen the other—Orna, Arna, some such name—often out riding, with pretence of solitary stylishness, twenty yards ahead of her liveried groom, who was a small, ugly, impudent native; and she would look neither to the right nor to the left as she passed grinning natives, some of them relatives, as they trudged toward the village on foot with vegetables and flowers and fruit. Day after day, with the quiet trop-trop-trop of the slender pony's hoof-beat, the dark, haughty maiden rode by, aloof, remote, unhappily proud.