in cold blood. She loved you, you think, and yet she
believed you a liar; she loved you, and she thinks you a traitor to
all she holds dear. She believes that of _you_, and you ... you love
her still!"

"Lady Landale!"

"Listen--she could never love you, as you should be loved. She was not
born your kin. Between you and her there is nothing--nothing but your
own fancy. Do not risk your life again for her--your life!"

She stopped, drew her breath with a long gasp, the spray from a
turbulent wave came dashing across the bows into her face, and as once
the blood of Cecile de Savenaye had been roused by the call of the
wild waters to leave safety and children and seek her doom, so now the
blood she had transmitted to her child, leaped to the same impulse
and bore her onwards with irresistible force.

"When," she pursued, "in the darkness you took me in your arms and
kissed me; what did the touch of my lips bring to you? My lips, not
Madeleine's.... Were you not happy then? Oh, you were, do not deny it,
I felt, I knew our souls met! My soul and yours, not yours and
Madeleine's. And I knew then that we were made for each other. The sea
and the wide free life upon it: it draws me as it draws you; it was
that drew me to you before I had ever seen you. Listen, listen. Do not
go to Scarthey--you have your beautiful ship, your faithful
crew--there are rich and wonderful worlds, warm seas that beckon. You
can have life, money, adventure--and love, love if you will. Take it,
take me with you! What should I care if you were an adventurer, a
smuggler, a traitor? What does anything matter if we are only
together? Let us go, we have but one life, let us go!"

Bereft of the power of movement he stood before her, and the sweat
that had gathered upon his brow ran down his face. But, as the meaning
of her proposition was borne in upon him, a shudder of fury shook him
from head to foot. No man should have offered dishonour to Jack Smith
and not have been struck the next instant at his feet. But a woman--a
woman, and Adrian's wife!

"Lady Landale," he said, after a silence during which the beating of
her heart turned her sick and cold, and all her fever heat fell from
her, leaving nothing but the knowledge of her shame, her misery, her
hopeless love. "Lady Landale, let me bring you back to your cabin--it
is late."

She went with him as one half-conscious. At the door she paused. The
light from within fell upon his face, deeply trou