“I was his second wife. His first wife was your mother—you are like your mother!” Noreen said in agitation.
The meaning was clear. Sheila laid a sharp hand on herself. “Don’t get excited,” she urged with kindly feeling. “He is dead and gone.”
“Yes, he is dead and gone.”
For a moment Noreen seemed to fight for mastery of her emotion, and Sheila said: “Lie still. It is all over. He cannot hurt us now.”
The other shook her head in protest. “I came here to forget, and I find you—his daughter.”
“You find more than his daughter; you find his first wife, and you find the one that killed him.”
“The one that killed him!” said the woman greatly troubled. “How did you know that?”
“All the world knows it. He was in prison four years, and since then he has been a mutineer, a treasure-hunter, a planter, and a saviour of these islands!”
The sick woman fell back in exhaustion. At that moment the servant entered with a pitcher of lime-juice. Sheila took it from her and motioned her out of the room; then she held a glass of the liquid to the stark lips.
“Drink,” she said in a low, kind voice, and she poured slowly into the patient’s mouth the cooling draught. A moment later Noreen raised herself up again.