Page:Wiggin--Ladies-in-waiting.djvu/240

  the entire household on a desert island. It needed only the emergencies of twenty-four hours to establish him as the dominant intellectual force and the practical governor of the sadly inefficient earls, countesses, ladies, and honorables; and before long he assumed the authority properly belonging to him. That the earl’s daughter finally fell in love with him seemed not so much dramatic license as a tribute to his obvious superiority. In London the lady would have been criticized as marrying beneath her; on the desert island it actually appeared as if she were doing particularly well for herself; indeed, Dolly confessed that though she would prefer marrying Marmaduke Hogg she would rather be wrecked in the company of the St. Kitts boatmaster.

2em breakfast, on our way to anchor at Antigua for the night, we saw in the distance the towering cone of Nevis, the “Gorgeous Isle” of Alexander Hamilton’s birth