"Yes, my companionship—whenever I could. About what you give Doctor John," and she looked at Jane with a sly inquiry as she laughed gently to herself.
Jane bit her lips and her face flushed scarlet. The cowardly thrust had not wounded her own heart. It had only uncovered the love of the man who lay enshrined in its depths. A sudden sense of the injustice done him arose in her mind and then her own helplessness in it all.
"I would give him everything I have, if I could," she answered simply, all her insistency gone, the tears starting to her eyes.
Lucy threw her arms about her sister and held her cheek to her own.
"Dear, I was only in fun; please forgive me. Everything is so solemn to you. Now kiss me and tell me you love me."
That night when Captain Holt came in to play with the little "Pond Lily," as he called Ellen, Jane told him of her conversation with Lucy, not as a reflection on her sister, but because she thought he ought to know how she felt toward Archie. The kiss had wiped out the tears, but the repudiation of Archie still rankled in her breast.
The captain listened patiently to the end. Then he said with a pause between each word:
"She's sailin' without her port and starboard lights, Miss Jane. One o' these nights with the tide settin' she'll run up ag'in somethin' solid in a fog, and then—God help her! If Bart had lived he might have come home and done the decent thing, and then we could git her into port some'er's for repairs, but that's over now. She better keep her lights trimmed. Tell her so for me."
What this "decent thing" was he never said—perhaps he had but a vague idea himself. Bart had injured Lucy and should have made reparation, but in what way except by marriage—he, perhaps, never formulated in his own mind.
Jane winced under the captain's outburst, but she held her peace. She knew how outspoken he was and how unsparing of those who differed from him and she laid part of his denunciation to this cause.