"Lady Landale," he said, after a silence during which the beating of her heart turned her sick and cold, and all her fever heat fell from her, leaving nothing but the knowledge of her shame, her misery, her hopeless love. "Lady Landale, let me bring you back to your cabin—it is late."
She went with him as one half-conscious. At the door she paused. The light from within fell upon his face, deeply troubled and white, but upon the lips and brows, what scorn! He was a god among men.... How she loved him, and he scorned her! Poor Murthering Moll!
She looked up.
"Have you no word for me?" she cried passionately.
"Only this, Lady Landale: I will forget."
Back towards the distant northern light the schooner clove her valiant way in spite of adverse winds and high seas.
The return journey was slower than the outward, and since the second day of it the lady kept much to her cabin, while the captain would pace the deck till far into the night, with unwonted uneasiness. To him the white wings of his Peregrine were bearing him all too slowly for endurance, while to the stormy woman's heart that beat through the night watches in passionate echo to his restless tread, every instant that passed but brought nearer the prospect of a future so intolerable that she could not bring herself to face it.
A gloom seemed to have come over the tight little craft, and to have spread even to the crew, who missed the ring of their captain's jolly laugh and the sound of his song.
When, within a day's sail of the goal, the planned disguise was finally carried out upon the schooner's fair sides and rigging, her beautiful stretch of sail curtailed, and her name (final disgrace), superseded by the unmeaning title of The Pretty Jane, open murmurs broke out which it required all Curwen's severity—and if the old martinet did not execute the summary justice he had threatened he was quite equal to the occasion nevertheless—and all Jack's personal influence to quell.