His wife! He could never be the same to her. He had forfeited the trust and confidence of the one loyal believer among them all.... And now, Lady Deppingham loathed him because his weakness had been greater than hers!
When he would have slain the four helpless islanders with his own hands, Hollingsworth Chase had stayed his rage with the single, caustic adjuration:
"Keep out of this, Browne! You've been enough of a damned bounder without trying that sort of thing."
Tears were in Bobby Browne's eyes as, mile after mile, he blundered along at the side of his fellow-countryman, his heart bleeding itself dry through the wound those words had made.
It was still pitch dark when they came to the ridge above the park. Through the trees the lights in the château could be seen. Lady Agnes opened her eyes and cried out in tremulous joy. A great wave of exaltation swept over Hollingsworth Chase. She was watching and waiting there with the others!
"Dame Fortune is good to us," he said, quite irrelevantly. Selim muttered the sacred word "Allah." Chase's trend of thought, whatever it may have been, was ruthlessly checked. "That reminds me," he said briskly, "we can't waste Allah's time in dawdling here. Luck has been with us—and Allah, too—great is Allah! But we'll have to do some skilful sneaking on our own hook, just the same. If the upper gate is being watched—and I doubt it very much—we'll have a hard time getting inside the walls, signal or no signal. The first thing for us to do is to make everything nice and snug for our four friends here. You've laboured well and faithfully," he said to the panting islanders, "and I'm going to reward you. I'm going to set you free. But not yet. Don't rejoice. First, we shall tie you securely to four stout trees just off the road. Then we'll leave you to take a brief, much-needed rest. Lady Deppingham, I fancy, can walk the rest of the way through the woods. Just as soon as we are inside the walls, I'll find some way to let your friends know that you are here. You can explain the situation to them better than I can. Tell 'em that it might have been worse."
He and Selim promptly marched the bewildered islanders into the wood. Bobby Browne, utterly exhausted, had thrown himself to the soft earth. Lady Deppingham was standing, swaying but resolute, her gaze upon the distant, friendly windows.
At last she turned to look at her husband, timorously, an appeal in her eyes that the darkness hid. He was staring at her, a stark figure in the night. After a long, tense moment of indecision, she held out her hands and he sprang forward in time to catch her as she swayed toward him. She was sobbing in his arms. Bobby Browne's heavy breathing ceased in that instant, and he closed his ears against the sound that came to them.
Deppingham gently implored her to sit down with him and rest. Together they walked a few paces farther away from their companion and sat down by the roadside. For many minutes no word was spoken; neither could whisper the words that were so hard in finding their way up from the depths. At last she said:
"I've made you unhappy. I've been so foolish. It has not been fun, either, my husband. God knows it hasn't. You do not love me now."