"Isn't he sound?" asked Maud quickly.
Lord Saltash laughed again. "I could sell him up--lock, stock, and barrel--to-morrow if I wanted."
She started. "Charlie! You don't mean that!"
He looked at her with a gleam of mischief in his queer eyes. "Of course I do! 'The Anchor' belongs to me, and all that is in it. It's mortgaged for considerably more than its value, and I hold the mortgage. Did he never mention that detail?"
Maud sat speechless.
He stretched out a lazy hand. "It's all right, Queen Maud. He is quite safe so long as he behaves decently to you and yours. He's something of a brute-beast, I believe? Well, if he needs any salutary correction, you must let me know."
His ugly face laughed into hers; the light in his eyes was half-mocking, half-tender.
"It's good to know that there may be something left that I can yet do for you," he said. "The worthy Jake may have a stout right arm, but he is not a Croesus."
He turned the conversation in his easy, well-bred fashion, and her embarrassment died down. But the carelessly uttered information dwelt persistently in her mind, even though she found herself talking of indifferent things. It was strange that all her affairs should be so completely--and it seemed so irrevocably--under the direct control of this man whom she had once so resolutely driven out of her life. Fate or chance had thrown them together again. A little secret tremor went through her. What would come of it?
She had not attempted to touch the hand he had stretched forth to her. It had fastened upon the arm of the chair in which she sat and rested there. Presently she looked down at it, her eyes attracted by the gleam of the ring upon it.