But instead of answering, the girl, with a half-choked sob, hurried down the ladder, leaving the two men alone.
Caruth hesitated for a moment, yearning to follow and comfort her, yet uncertain whether it would be best to do so.
Captain Wilson’s voice aroused him. “We’ll be round the island in half an hour or more,” he said gruffly. “Which way shall I head then?”
Caruth shook his head. “I don’t know, Captain,” he confessed. “I’ll talk with Miss Fitzhugh, and see what she thinks.”
“Might as well, I reckon. She’s got more brains than most women.”
Swiftly Caruth descended to the cabin and there, as he had expected, he found the girl who had been the inspiration of the whole trip.
Seated at the table in the cabin of the Sea Spume, Marie faced the ruin of her hopes. Indeed, she faced more. For, as she had descended from the bridge, one of the divers met her and commanded her, by an authority she could not dispute, to report at once to the Inner Circle of the Brotherhood, to explain the causes of her failure. Well she knew what such an order meant, and for the first time in her life she shrank from the ordeal.
At that moment Caruth came upon her. Never, even in her brief period of exaltation of a few hours before, had she appealed to him as in this time of abasement. Stricken by the realization of what had been and what must be, she yet held her head proudly erect, though its poise suggested, not triumph, but the grand air with which nobles rode in the tumbrels to the guillotine. Her violet eyes were deep as ever, but in their depths lay a pathetic softness, as of a child grieving over some disappointment which it was too young to understand. When Caruth, with throbbing heart, strode forward and took her in his arms, she melted all at once upon his shoulder.
Gently he stroked her dark hair. “There, there, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Cheer up! Everything isn’t lost! We’ll live to triumph yet.”
But the girl sobbed on hopelessly, her slender form shaking with emotion, until Caruth grew frightened.