Island in the Dawn Read Online Free PDF

maintained at considerable expense. A delicious melon frappi was served before the exquisitely aromaed coffee was brought to table. Newly-baked rolls and preserve and golden curls of butter made Felicity realize that, in spite of the heat, she had an appetite.
    Cassandra refused the more solid parts of the breakfast — her figure was always her main preoccupation — but praised the melon unstintingly. She also dilated upon the bowl of fruit. Their host admitted that although he was not interested in marketing the overflow, much of it still found its way overseas, and for that purpose he maintained a manager whom they would meet later in the day. Cassandra didn’t look exactly interested at the mention of the manager, but Felicity, who knew her very well indeed, could feel the slight prickling of interest below her skin. To Cassandra any member of the masculine world was not without some sort of appeal, and at the moment the man who had temporarily caused her a sensation of panic was obviously claiming a full share of her curiosity.
    She wanted to know how long he proposed to remain on the island, and whether there was any likelihood at all of her uncle returning to take over again. It was not that she was so much interested in her uncle’s activities, but this graceful man with the looks that titivated her connoisseur’s palate in a way that it hadn’t known for some time was a bit of a mystery. He was a romantic mystery too, knowing, as she did, so much about the actual details of his accident — and all her instincts urged her to probe as far as possible. She asked blatant questions, such as when he would resume his career again. Felicity, who had not yet recovered from the shock of hearing Cassandra mike a statement that had struck her at the time as uncivilized, as well as unfeeling, was amazed that her employer could converse in that calm and interested manner, when only such a short while before she had wanted to run away from something that repulsed her.
    Paul Halloran’s answers to direct questions were entirely noncommittal and although Cassandra, in her primrose sun-suit and with her glorious Titian hair and magnolia skin, must have had a kind of shock effect upon his weakened sight — perhaps the most pleasing shock he had had for a long time! — he did not even take advantage of the opportunity to gaze at her. In fact, halfway through the breakfast he restored his dark glasses and looked through them over the veranda rail at what was, for the time being at any rate, his property, as if neither of the two women were actually there.
    Felicity could quite understand this attitude, for he was accustomed to solitariness, and possibly he found the interruption annoying. She thought it would be difficult to find anything more delightful, and more restful to gaze at than those superbly tended lawns that were as green as emeralds in the light that was growing brighter every minute as the sun climbed into the heavens. Even more restful was the plantation that stretched beyond the lawns, and lay, as she knew, between them and the harshly glittering sea. James Menzies had chosen a very satisfying site for his house, ringed as it was by those protective trees; and at least she, Felicity, could appreciate the beauty they enclosed.
    She was not so sure about Cassandra, for Cassandra boasted that it was human contacts that she enjoyed, and not so much the beauties of the earth — although the right surroundings were always necessary if one was to enjoy the human contacts! By which Felicity knew she meant moonlight when she was taking an after - dinner stroll with an escort who was sufficiently personable, and if possible an attractive prospect that the moonlight would make more attractive! Cassandra took a cat-like pleasure in luxurious back-grounds and could appreciate the finer points of art and flawless craftsmanship. Hence her admiration for the low French bed in her room and the Florentine mirror on the wall; and