“She will never see hers: any more than I shall see mine.”
She paused again, thinking harder and harder.
“We must take two places in the next mail steamer. I must look after my husband, AND YOU AFTER YOUR WIFE.”
CHAPTER XXV.
Mrs. Falcon's bitter feeling against Dr. Staines did not subside; it merely went out of sight a little. They were thrown together by potent circumstances, and in a manner connected by mutual obligations; so an open rupture seemed too unnatural. Still Phoebe was a woman, and, blinded by her love for her husband, could not forgive the innocent cause of their present unhappy separation; though the fault lay entirely with Falcon.
Staines took her on board the steamer, and paid her every attention. She was also civil to him; but it was a cold and constrained civility.
About a hundred miles from land the steamer stopped, and the passengers soon learned there was something wrong with her machinery. In fact, after due consultation, the captain decided to put back.
This irritated and distressed Mrs. Falcon so that the captain, desirous to oblige her, hailed a fast schooner, that tacked across her bows, and gave Mrs. Falcon the option of going back with him, or going on in the schooner, with whose skipper he was acquainted.
Staines advised her on no account to trust to sails, when she could have steam with only a delay of four or five days; but she said, “Anything sooner than go back. I can't, I can't on such an errand.”