wards as before.

Captain Jack drew back, paused an instant, clutched his hair with a
desperate gesture and slowly walked away.

* * * * *

The voyage of the _Peregrine_ was as rapid as her captain had hoped,
and the dawn of the fourth day broke upon them from behind the French
coast, where Normandy joins old Armorica.

For a little while, Lady Landale, awakened from her uneasy sleep by
the unusual stir on deck, lay languidly watching the light as it
filtered through the port-hole of her little cabin, the colours
growing out of greyness on the walls; listening to the tramp of feet
and the mate's husky voice without. Then her heart tightened with a
premonition of the coming separation. She sat up and looked out of her
window: as the horizon rose and fell giddily to her eye there lay the
fatal line of land. The land of her blood but to her now, the land of
exile!

She had seen but little of Captain Jack these last two days;
interchanged but few and formal words with him, now and then, as they
met morning and evening or came across each other during the day. She
felt that he avoided her. But she had seen him, she had heard his
voice, they had been close to each other upon the great seas, however
divided, and this had been something to feed upon. Now what prospect
before her hungry heart but--starvation?

At least the last precious moments should not be lost to her. She rose
and dressed in haste; a difficult operation in her maimed state.
Before leaving her narrow quarters, she peered into the looking-glass
with an eagerness she had never displayed in the days of her vain
girlhood.

"What a fright!" she said to the anxious face that looked back at her
with yearning eyes and dark burning lips. And she thought of
Madeleine's placid fairness as Cain might of Abel's modest altar.

When she emerged upon deck, a strange and beautiful scene was spread
to her gaze. A golden haze enveloped the water and the coast, but out
of it, in brown jagged outline, against the blazing background of
glowing sunlight rose the towers, the pointed roofs and spires of that
old corsair's hive, St. Malo. The waters were bright green, frothed
with oily foam around the ship. The masts cast strange long black
shadows, and Molly saw one spring from her own feet as she moved into
the morning glow. The _Peregrine_, she noticed, was cruising parallel
with the coast, instead of making for the harbour, and just now all