used and most justifiably wrathful!

And she, being a woman whose face was at most times as a book on which
to read the working of her soul, there was something in her look, as
in silence she listened and gazed upon him, which struck him suddenly
dumb. Such a look on a face so like, yet so unlike, that of his love
was startling in the extreme--horrible.

He stepped back, and made as if he would have rushed from the room.
Then bethinking himself that he was a madman, he drew a chair near her
in a contrary mood, sat down, and fixed his eyes upon her very
steadily.

She dropped her long lids, and demurely composed her features by some
instinct that women have, rather than from any sense of the impression
she had produced.

A little while they sat thus again in silence. In the silence, the
rolling of the ship and the manner in which, as she raced on her way,
she seemed to breathe and strain, worked in with the mood of each; in
his, with the storm and stress of his soul; in hers, as the very
expression of her new freedom and reckless pleasure.

Then he spoke; the strong emotion that had warmed her had now left his
voice. It was cold and scornful.

"Madam, I await your explanation. So far, I find myself only the
victim of a trick as unworthy and cruel as it is purposeless."

She had delayed carrying out her mission with the most definite
perverseness. She could not but acknowledge the justice of his
reproof, realise the sorry part she must play in his eyes, the
inexcusable folly of the whole proceeding, and yet she was strung to a
very lively indignation by the tone he had assumed, and suddenly saw
herself in the light of a most disinterested and injured virtue.

"Captain Smith," she exclaimed, flashing a hot glance at him, "you
assume strangely the right to be angry with me! Be angry if you will
with things as they are; rail against fate if you will, but be
grateful to me.--I have risked much to serve you."

The whole expression of his face changed abruptly to one of eager,
almost entreating, inquiry.

"Do me the favour," she continued, "to look into the pocket of my
cloak--my arm hurts me if I move--you will find there a letter
addressed to you. I was adjured to see that it should reach you in
safety. I promised to place it in your own hands. This could hardly
have been done sooner, as you know."

The words all at once seemed to alter the whole situation. He sprang
up and came to her quickly.

"Oh, forgive