Still looking out across the sea, Molly replied, in a deep shaken voice, unlike her own, "You did not think it unfit for my sister."
"Your sister? But your sister was to have been my wife!"
Burning through the mists of her unshed tears once more her glance returned to his: "And I—" she cried and here was suddenly silent again, gazing at the thin circlet of gold upon her left hand, beneath the flashing diamonds. After a moment then, she broke out fiercely—"Oh do with me what you will, but for God's sake leave me in peace!" And stamping, turned her shoulder on him to stare straight outwards as before.
Captain Jack drew back, paused an instant, clutched his hair with a desperate gesture and slowly walked away.
The voyage of the Peregrine was as rapid as her captain had hoped, and the dawn of the fourth day broke upon them from behind the French coast, where Normandy joins old Armorica.
For a little while, Lady Landale, awakened from her uneasy sleep by the unusual stir on deck, lay languidly watching the light as it filtered through the port-hole of her little cabin, the colours growing out of greyness on the walls; listening to the tramp of feet and the mate's husky voice without. Then her heart tightened with a premonition of the coming separation. She sat up and looked out of her window: as the horizon rose and fell giddily to her eye there lay the fatal line of land. The land of her blood but to her now, the land of exile!
She had seen but little of Captain Jack these last two days; interchanged but few and formal words with him, now and then, as they met morning and evening or came across each other during the day. She felt that he avoided her. But she had seen him, she had heard his voice, they had been close to each other upon the great seas, however divided, and this had been something to feed upon. Now what prospect before her hungry heart but—starvation?
At least the last precious moments should not be lost to her. She rose and dressed in haste; a difficult operation in her maimed state. Before leaving her narrow quarters, she peered into the looking-glass with an eagerness she had never displayed in the days of her vain girlhood.
"What a fright!" she said to the anxious face that looked back at her with yearning eyes and dark burning lips. And she thought of Madeleine's placid fairness as Cain might of Abel's modest altar.