f others covered with barnacle and weed, he heard voices,
and stopped short, hidden from the group before him by one of the rocks.

His toil had been in vain, and a jealous, maddening pang shot through
him.

There, some forty yards away, sat Barron upon a huge boulder, his back
propped against a rock, and his attendant knitting a short distance
back, while Miss Jerrold sat on the sands reading beneath a great
sunshade. The admiral was smoking his cigar, looking down at Barron;
Edie and Guest were together; and Myra, pale, gentle, and with a smile
upon her lip, was offering the invalid a bunch of grapes, which he was
gently taking from her hand.

"The past condoned," said Stratton to himself; "the future--well, he is
her husband, after all. Great Heavens, am I really mad, or is all this
a waking dream?"

He staggered back and nearly fell, so terrible was the rush of horror
through his brain, but he could not draw away his eyes, and he saw that
Barron was speaking and holding out his hand--that Myra responded by
laying hers within his palm, and the fingers closed upon it--fingers
that not many hours back must have held Brettison's throat in a deadly
grip.

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE.

JULES IS FROM HOME.

"And that is the woman who told me she loved me!" said Stratton as he
drew back behind the rocks and walked slowly away.

There was a strangely mingled feeling in his breast; one moment it was
horror, the next disgust, that they two should join hands: she so young
and beautiful, he prematurely aged and little better than an idiot.
Then it was misery--then despair, which swept over his soul to join
forces and harrow him so that he felt that he could bear no more.

It was the thought of Brettison that saved him just as the blood was
rushing to his head and a stroke was imminent.

He had left his friend apparently dying, and had rushed off to save
Myra.

"While I was wanted there," he muttered in a weak, piteous way. "Ah, it
has all been a dream, and now I am awake. Poor Brettison, my best
friend after all."

For a few moments the blood flushed to his temples in his resentment
against Myra, and then against Guest; for, after all that he had said to
him on the past night, how could he entirely accept the position he
occupied and remain tacit and content there with that man in his
company?

"Another slave to a woman's charms!" he said, with a bitter laugh.
"Poor old Percy! how can I blame him after what I h