Excerpt from The Love-Locks of Diana Mrs. Harding slumbered in her private sitting-room beyond the bar - thank the fairies for that, since her hand was sometimes heavy, and Often uncertain in its direction, after her midday meal, Diana remembered with a little shiver. Up in the shuttered room Of the top storey, cool and whitewashed and bare Of all but the most necessary furniture, the guests in the Cosmopolitan slept pleasantly enough under their mosquito curtains, to wake when the sirocco had died down and the listless air was cooled. The guests had, most of them, come off the big transport lying at anchor In the Quarantine Harbour far up the creek. Something had gone wrong with her machinery, and while the necessary repairs were going on, the home ward bound passengers had escaped from their narrow cabins and stifling berths, to the big room of the Sliema hotel, that had once been a palace when the island was ruled by knights in golden armour. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.