ay.

He was prepared to quiet her, if she burst into a frenzy of passion; to
reason with her, if she begged for time; to sympathize with her, if she
melted into tears. To his inexpressible surprise, results falsified
all his calculations. She heard him without uttering a word, without
shedding a tear. When he had done, she dropped into a chair. Her large
gray eyes stared at him vacantly. In one mysterious instant all her
beauty left her; her face stiffened awfully, like the face of a
corpse. For the first time in the captain's experience of her,
fear--all-mastering fear--had taken possession of her, body and soul.

"You are not flinching," he said, trying to rouse her. "Surely you are
not flinching at the last moment?"

No light of intelligence came into her eyes, no change passed over her
face. But she heard him--for she moved a little in the chair, and slowly
shook her head.

"You planned this marriage of your own freewill," pursued the captain,
with the furtive look and the faltering voice of a man ill at ease. "It
was your own idea--not mine. I won't have the responsibility laid on
my shoulders--no! not for twice two hundred pounds. If your resolution
fails you; if you think better of it--?"

He stopped. Her face was changing; her lips were moving at last. She
slowly raised her left hand, with the fingers outspread; she looked at
it as if it was a hand that was strange to her; she counted the days on
it, the days before the marriage.

"Friday, one," she whispered to herself; "Saturday, two; Sunday, three;
Monday--" Her hands dropped into her lap, her face stiffened again; the
deadly fear fastened its paralyzing hold on her once more, and the next
words died away on her lips.

Captain Wragge took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

"Damn the two hundred pounds!" he said. "Two thousand wouldn't pay me
for this!"

He put the handkerchief back, took the envelopes which he had addressed
to himself out of his pocket, and, approaching her closely for the first
time, laid his hand on her arm.

"Rouse yourself," he said, "I have a last word to say to you. Can you
listen?"

She struggled, and roused herself--a faint tinge of color stole over her
white cheeks--she bowed her head.

"Look at these," pursued Captain Wragge, holding up the envelopes. "If
I turn these to the use for which they have been written, Mrs. Lecount's
master will never receive Mrs. Lecount's letter. If I tear them up, he
will know