sguised hatred and with scorn immeasurable that he now
surveyed the woman who had degraded him in his own eyes. At another
time Molly might have yielded before his resentment, but at this hour
her whole being was encompassed by a single thought.

"It is for you--for you!" she repeated with ashen lips; "you must go
before it is too late."

"And is it not too late?" stormed he. "Too late, indeed, do I see my
treachery to Adrian, my more than brother! Upon my ship I could not
avoid your company, but here--Oh, I should have thought of him and not
of myself, and done as my honour bade me! You are right; since you
would not go, I should have done so. It was weak; it was mad; worse,
worse--dishonourable!"

But she had no ears for his reproaches, no power to feel the wounds
he dealt her woman's heart with such relentless hand.

"Then you will go," she cried. "Tell Rene, the signal."

He started and looked at her with a different expression.

"Have you heard anything; has anything happened?" he asked, recovering
self-restraint at the thought of danger.

"Not yet," she replied, "not yet, but it is coming."

Her look and voice were so charged with tragic force that for the
moment he was impressed, and, brave man though he was, felt a little
cold thrill run down his spine. She continued, in accents of the most
piercing misery:

"And it will have been through me--it will have been through me! Oh,
in mercy let me make the signal! Say you will go to-night."

"I will go."

There followed a little pause of breathless silence between them. Then
as, without speaking, he would have turned away, a loud, peremptory
knock resounded upon the door of the keep and echoed and re-echoed
with lugubrious reverberation through the old stone passages around
them.

At first, terror-stricken, her tongue clave to her palate, her feet
were rooted to the ground; then with a scream she flung herself upon
him and would have dragged him towards the door.

"They have come--hide--hide!"

He threw up his head to listen, while he strove to disengage himself.
The blood had leaped to his cheek, and fire to his eye. "And if it be
Adrian?" he cried.

Another knock thundered through the still air.

"It is but one man," cried Rene from his tower down the stairs. "You
may open, Moggie."

"No--no," screamed Molly beside herself, and tighter clasped her arms
round Captain Jack's neck.

"Adrian, it is Adrian!" said he. "Hush, Madam, let me go! Would