tress's face, Madame Lapotre flew
upon her errand; a moment later, Captain Jack entered the room and
stood before Lady Landale with a look of impatient inquiry.

"Oh, it is wicked, it is mad!" cried she passionately; "it is tempting
God to remain here!"

"Of whom are you speaking?" he asked, with an involuntary glance of
contempt at the distracted figure. "If it is of yourself, I entirely
concur. How often these last days, and how earnestly have I not begged
of you to return to Pulwick? Was not the situation you placed me in
with regard to Adrian already odious enough that it needed this added
folly? Oh, I know--I know what you would say: spare it me. My safety?
You fear for me? Ah, Lady Landale, that you could have but left me in
peace!"

He had waxed hot with anger from his first would-be calmness, as he
spoke. This dismal life of close but inharmonious proximity, started
upon the seas and continued under his absent friend's own roof had
tried his impetuous temper to the utmost. Upon the morrow of their
return he had, indeed, exercised all his powers of persuasion to
induce Lady Landale to proceed to the Priory; but, impelled by her
frantic dread of the separation, and entrenching herself behind the
argument that her mysterious re-appearance would awaken suspicion
where people would otherwise believe the _Peregrine_ still in foreign
parts, she had declared her irrevocable determination not to quit the
island until she knew him to be safe. And he had remained, actuated by
the dual desire, first to exonerate himself personally in her
husband's eyes from any possible suspicion of complicity in Molly's
flight--the bare thought of which had become a horrible torment to
him--then to encompass through that good friend's means an interview
and full explanation with Madeleine, which not only the most ordinary
precaution for his life, but likewise every instinct of pride forbade
him now to seek himself.

Thus began a state of affairs which, as the days succeeded each other
without news of Sir Adrian, became every moment more intolerable to
his loyalty. The inaction, the solitary hours of reflection; the
maddening feeling of unavailing proximity to his heart's dearest, of
impotency against the involving meshes of the present false and
hateful position; all this had brought into the young man's soul a
fever of anger, which, as fevers will, consumed him the more fiercely
because of his vigour and strength.

It was with undi