pleased.

'Swear that you will hold to me against all the world,' he said,
passionately, turning his head to look across the stern of the vessel.

'Against all the world,' she answered, softly.

'I believe your courage will be tested before long,' he said; and then
he cried to the skipper, 'Crowd on all sail, Tomaso. That boat is
chasing us.'

Lesbia sprang to her feet, looking as he looked to a spot of vivid white
on the horizon. Montesma had snatched up a glass and was watching that
distant spot.

'It is a steam-yacht,' he said. 'They will catch us.'

He was right. Although the _Cayman_ strained every timber so that her
keel cut through the water like a boomerang, wind and steam beat wind
without steam. In less than an hour the steam-yacht was beside the
_Cayman_, and Lord Maulevrier and Lord Hartfield had boarded Mr.
Smithson's deck.

'I have come to take you and Lady Kirkbank back to Cowes, Lesbia,' said
Maulevrier. 'I'm not going to make any undue fuss about this little
escapade of yours, provided you go back with Hartfield and me at once,
and pledge yourself never to hold any further communication with Don
Gomez de Montesma.'

The Spaniard was standing close by, silent, white as death, but ready to
make a good fight. That pallor of the clear olive skin was not from want
of pluck; but there was the deadly knowledge of the ground he stood
upon, the doubt that any woman, least of all such a woman as Lady Lesbia
Haselden, could be true to him if his character and antecedents were
revealed to her. And how much or how little these two men could tell her
about himself or his past life was the question which the next few
minutes would solve.

'I am not going back with you,' answered Lesbia. 'I am going to Havre
with Don Gomez de Montesma. We are to be married there as soon as we
arrive.'

'To be married--at Havre,' cried Maulevrier. 'An appropriate place. A
sailor has a wife in every port, don't you know.'

'We had better go down to the cabin,' said Hartfield, laying his hand
upon his friend's shoulder. 'If Lady Lesbia will be good enough to come
with us we can tell her all that we have to tell quietly there.'

Lord Hartfield's tone was unmistakeable. Everything was known.

'You can talk at your ease here,' said Montesma, facing the two men with
a diabolical recklessness and insolence of manner. 'Not one of these
fellows on board knows a dozen sentences of English.'

'I would rather talk below, if it is