“Not so, Sir Hugh, not so; ‘tis for your sakes in truth since you remember you never told me what you would wish done—afterward. Your possessions also—where are they to be sent? Doubtless you have money and other things of value. Be sure that they shall be sealed up. I’ll see to it myself, but—how shall I dispose of them?”
“Madame, I will tell you when I return,” said Hugh shortly.
“Nay, nay, Sir Hugh; pray do not return. Those who are gone had best keep gone, I think, who always have had a loathing of ghosts. Therefore, I beg you, tell me now, but do not come back shining like a saint and gibbering like a monkey at dead of night, because if you do I am sure I shall not understand, and if there is an error, who will set it straight?”
Hugh leaned against a marble pillar in the hall and looked at his hostess helplessly, while Sir Geoffrey, catching her drift at length, broke in:
“Cease such ill-omened talk, wife. Think you that it is of a kind to give brave men a stomach in a fight to the end?”
“I know not, Geoffrey, but surely ‘tis better to have these matters settled, for, as you often say, death is always near us.”
“Ay, madam,” broke in Grey Dick, who could bear no more of it, “death is always near to all of us, and especially so in Venice just now. Therefore, I pray you tell me—in case we should live and you should die, you and all about you—whether you have any commands to give as to what should be done with your gold and articles of value, or any messages to leave for friends in England.”
Then, having uttered this grim jest, Dick took his master by the arm and drew him through the door.
Afterward, for a reason that shall be told, he was sorry that it had ever passed his lips. Still in the boat Sir Geoffrey applauded him, saying that his lady’s melancholy had grown beyond all bearing, and that she did little but prate to him about his will and what colour of marble he desired for his tomb.
After a journey that seemed long to Hugh, who wished to have this business over, they came to the Place of Arms. Their route there, however, was not the same which they had followed on the previous night. Leaving the short way through the low part of the town untraversed, they rowed from one of the canals into the harbour itself, where they were joined by many other boats which waited for them and so on to the quay. Hugh saw at once that the death ship, Light of the East, was gone, and incautiously said as much to Sir Geoffrey.