husband in
attendance upon her at the breakfast table in the saloon.

She received Montesma with the faintest inclination of the head, and she
carefully avoided all occasion of speech with him during the leisurely,
long spun-out meal. She was as white as her muslin gown, and her eyes
told of a sleepless night. She talked a little, very little to Lady
Kirkbank and Mr. Smithson; to the Spaniard not at all. And yet Montesma
was in no manner dashed by this appearance of deep offence. So might
Francesca have looked the morning after that little scene over the book;
yet she sacrificed her salvation for her lover all the same. It was a
familiar stage upon the journey which Montesma knew by heart. Here the
inclination of the road was so many degrees more or less; for this hill
you are commanded to put on an extra horse; at this stage it is
forbidden to go more than eight miles an hour, and so on, and so on.
Montesma knew every inch of the ground. He put on a melancholy look, and
talked very little. He had been on deck all night, and so there was an
excuse for his being quiet.

Lady Kirkbank related her impressions of the storm, and talked enough
for four. She had suffered the pangs of purgatory, but her natural
cheeriness asserted itself, and she made no moaning about past agonies
which had exercised a really delightful influence on her appetite. Mr.
Smithson also was cheerful. He had paid his annual tribute to Neptune,
and might hope to go scot-free for the rest of the season.

'If I had stayed on deck I must have had my finger in the pie; so I
thought it better to go below and get a good night's rest in the
steward's cabin,' he said, not caring to confess his sufferings as
frankly as Lady Kirkbank admitted hers.

After breakfast, which was prolonged till noon, Montesma asked Smithson
to smoke a cigarette on deck with him.

'I want to talk to you on a rather serious matter,' he said.

Lesbia heard the words, and looked up with a frightened glance. Could he
mean to attempt anything desperate? Was he going to confess the fatal
truth to Horace Smithson, to tell her affianced lover that she was
untrue to her bond, that she loved him, Montesma, as fondly as he loved
her, that their two souls had mingled like two flames fanned by the same
current, and thence had risen to a conflagration which must end in ruin,
if she were not set free to follow where her heart had gone, free to
belong to that man whom her spirit chose for lor