"I don't know what you consider a fair warning; but I had guessed so much."
"The first for fifteen years," she pursued; "and I won't promise that I shall not behave worse—considerably worse. Are you very angry with me?"
"My dear," answered the Commandant ("My dear," it should be explained, is the commonest form of address in the Islands, and one that even a prisoner will use to the magistrate trying him), "if you really wish to know, I am enjoying myself recklessly; and it would be idle to call my garrison to put you under restraint, since you have already suborned them. I started, you see, with the imprudence of showing you my defences, and now you have us all at your mercy."
"You have been more than good to me," said Vashti, after a pause; "but the fortress is already vacated." She nodded towards a valise which rested under the thwart by the foot of the mast. "Mrs. Treacher packed it for me," she explained, "and her husband carried it down to the boat. If Ruth needs me—as she almost certainly does—and if her husband will tolerate me, I shall sleep on Saaron to-night."
"But you will come back?" he asked, dismayed.
"Certainly not, unless the Lord Proprietor drives me to seek refuge."
The Commandant did not answer. He had known that this happy time must be short; he had known it from the first, and that the end would come unexpectedly.
The wind had fallen slightly, and the boat crept up to the entrance of Cromwell's Sound with sail that alternately tautened its sheet and let it fall slack. The single bell of Brefar Church yet rung to service; but the sun had sunk beneath the horizon, and the sea-lights were flashing around the horizon before Saaron loomed close on the port hand; and as they crept towards the East Porth under the loom of the Island, a row-boat shot out from the beach there, and headed up the Sound towards Brefar.
"Hush!" commanded Vashti, and peered forward.
But a boat putting out from Saaron at this hour could only belong to Saaron's only inhabitants, and could be bound but on one errand. And Ruth was in her, for, presently, as the children's voices travelled back across the still water, Vashti heard Matthew Henry's pitched to a shrill interrogative and calling his mother by name.