"You need not distress yourself, Bertrand," he said, very steadily, and as he spoke his hand was on the Frenchman's shoulder. "Chris will never leave me again."
"Ah!" Eagerly Bertrand looked up at him. He had begun to gasp again, and his words were hurried and difficult of utterance. "And you, monsieur—you will not—leave her?"
Mordaunt made no verbal answer, but their eyes must have met in the dimness and some message have passed between them, for there was a tremor of sheer relief in his voice when Bertrand spoke again.
"Oh, my friend!" he said. "My dear friend!" And, yielding to the hand that gently pressed him back, he reclined upon his pillows and became passive.
Mordaunt remained beside him for several seconds longer, but he did not speak again. When he straightened himself at length, he glanced round for Max, and motioned him away.
They went together into the adjoining room and softly closed the door.
And so Chris and her preux chevalier were left alone by the open window to end their summer idyll to the music of the rising tide that crooned and murmured among the rocks of Valpré that had seen its beginning.
CHAPTER XI
THE END OF THE VOYAGE
How the sun was shining on the water! What a glorious morning for a bathe! Chris laughed to herself—a happy little, inconsequent laugh.