The gray man still hesitated and then, with the air of one who has probed an enigma the solution of which still escaped him, turned and passed into the cabin. She heard his footsteps echo along the deck over her head.
Aylmer's eyes opened, and then one of them closed again, in a wink!
She laid her finger warningly upon her lips. She bent till her lips touched his ear.
"I knew it—I knew it!" she breathed joyfully. "Ah, but you nearly spoilt it all. You smiled—I saw the beginning of it—when he made his slip, and he might have seen it, too!"
He smiled again.
"The renegade!" he whispered. "I knew it before this last hour; I saw it in his face when Landon came here, before. They have some understanding, those two. And it was he who betrayed me—with his suggestion about the halliards. I heard him, before they let them go!"
"And I!" she answered. "He is against us; we are alone, against them all!"
"Where does his profit come in?" he asked, wonderingly. "What arguments has Landon used; how can a man like him be the gainer?"
She shook her head.
"One has met him—in Gibraltar—in society," she said. "But do we know anything of him; does any one know?"