“You have not awakened them, my friend; they are burnt in.”
He stood there in silence, holding her hand, which was like a lump of ice in his warm grasp, and which she allowed to remain there, unconscious of his touch. He could mark the hollow under her eyes, the lines of pain between her dark brows, and he sighed.
She sighed too; her mind came back from its troubled wanderings in the far Brazil, and she looked down at her hand, drawing it away, and regarding him with haughty disfavour.
“I am sorry,” he said.
“You are strangely daring, Mr Hume.”
“My thought was to show my sympathy, and I could not find words.”
“It is true. You English are slow of speech, but quick to act. That is why, in this matter, I am trusting to my mother’s countrymen.”
“Will you trust me also, my Captain?”
“You! But we are to land you at Madeira.”
“I am in your service already for a time; will you not engage me permanently?”