Page:George Gibbs--Love of Monsieur.djvu/209

 And in a moment, when he looked again, she was gone.

How was it that the thread of this woman’s life had become entangled again with his? Could it be that the hand which controlled his destiny had wrought these miracles in his strange career in a mere sport or purposeless plan? Could it be that, two grains of sand afloat on the winds of life’s desert, they had met, parted, and come together again? In the infinity of wide ocean he had gone adrift upon the tide of another life with nothing but his memories to bind him to the old. But sure as metal to its loadstone his vessel had been driven, in spite of wind and the raging of the sea, with an unerring certainty into the very path of the San Isidro. How was she, the toast of London, the bright particular planet in that bright firmament, divested of all the bright luster of her constellation, alone and all but friendless, adrift in these wild waters? How came this gay paradise bird, despoiled of its plumage, in so foreign a clime? Why had she left London? Had some convulsion of her starry sky cast her down from 197