“Let fate alter it, then,” said the admiral gruffly. “Don’t catch me at it. Myra hasn’t suggested such a thing.”
“She? No,” said Miss Jerrold quickly. “O Mark!” she cried, “I am so glad to see her happy once again.”
“God bless her, yes. I think she must have had all the trouble meant for her life in one big storm, so that she may have a calm passage right to the end.”
“I pray that it may be so,” said Aunt Jerrold fervently. “How happy she looks.”
“Yes,” said Sir Mark, closing the glass through which he had watched her while his sister spoke.
They were right, for the calm had come. Seated hand in hand, Stratton had told Myra in the soft, dim light of evening, while the waters murmured at her feet, all the tangle of his troubles, and she had literally forced him to tell her all again and again, for the narrative was never tedious to her as a twice told tale, while the knowledge of all that he had suffered for her sake drew the bond between them in a faster knot.
On this particular morning, when all was bright and sunny, there yet was one cloud near, for a servant came out from the cottage to say that monsieur was wanted.
Stratton sprang up, and Myra rose and clung to his arm, her eyes dilating with the dread of some new trouble. But he at once calmed her.
“There can be no trouble now that we could not meet,” he whispered; and she sank back in her seat to watch him till he disappeared within the door.
The officer who had arrested Henderson was standing in the little room Stratton used, and with him a thin, earnest looking man in black, who seemed to wear an official uniform as well as air.