“There is nothing to forgive. It is the fortune of war.”
“Is it painful? I am something of a chirurgeon. Let me—” He looked her in the face, and then drew back in a mingling of confusion and pride.
“It is nothing, I tell you,” she broke in, with a stamp of the foot. “Nothing. I do not even feel it.” And when she had enwrapped it again she lowered her voice until it trembled with the earnestness of her entreaty. “Have pity, monsieur—pity!”
The Frenchman had turned away and was looking out into the moonless night. The slender white hand stole faltering forward until it rested upon the coarse sleeve of his coat.
“Take me with you, monsieur. Take me aboard the Saucy Sally.”
And still looking out to sea, he replied, in a voice gruff and rugged, which did not avail to hide a generous courtesy beneath:
“It shall be as you wish, madame. Bid the señorita prepare at once.”
And in a moment, when he looked again, she was gone.
How was it that the thread of this woman’s life had become entangled again with his? Could it be that the hand which controlled his destiny had wrought these miracles in his strange career in a mere sport or purposeless plan? Could it be that, two grains of sand afloat on the winds of life’s desert, they had met, parted, and come together again? In the infinity of wide ocean he had gone adrift upon the tide of another life with nothing but his memories to bind him to the old. But sure as metal to its loadstone his vessel had been driven, in spite of wind and the raging of the sea, with an unerring certainty into the very path of the San Isidro. How was she, the toast of London, the bright particular planet in that bright firmament, divested of all the bright luster of her constellation, alone and all but friendless, adrift in these wild waters? How came this gay paradise bird, despoiled of its plumage, in so foreign a clime? Why had she left London? Had some convulsion of her starry sky cast her down from her high seat? Where was Captain Ferrers? Were they become estranged? What had come of the papers? The enigma grew in complexity. Her speech had puzzled him. Why had she been thankful to have found him? Was it the joy of learning that her captor was one who had not sunk so low that he could do the vile deeds she had feared of him? What atonement was it she offered? And for what? His heart leaped wildly, only to shrink again to a dull, drowsy beat. What did it mean? Nothing, or anything; conciliation, mock humility—a sop to Cerberus. Bah! He was done with hope. There, a shadow of disconsolation, he stood, fixed and nerveless, struggling against the soft, cajoling hand-maidens of Virtue—Gentleness, Beauty, Reverence, Love—personified in this woman, whom, try as he might, he could not pluck from his life.