Kindly impulse urged the old man to enter and offer encouragement. His better judgment, however, held him back. He quite knew Lorna's nature. To display her deeper feelings in public had always been abhorrent to the girl.
The emotion that racked her now, Tobias realized, stirred Lorna's nature to its very dregs. As she rocked on her knees beside the bed, a cry burst from her lips which held the old man back:
"God, bring him back! Ralph! Ralph! Save him, dear God, for—for I love him! I love him so!"
The passion of tears that followed brought a lump into the lightkeeper's throat that all but choked him, while the salt drops stung his eyelids. He backed away from the bedroom door and tiptoed to the stairs.
He mounted softly to the lamp room. He felt that he had somehow been indelicate in listening to that cry of the girl's burdened heart. He had looked upon something which she had wished to keep hidden—a secret that Lorna had heretofore denied.
Tobias's weather-blown face was puckered into a very serious expression. Used as he was to the sea and sea-going, having taken a man's part in the trade all his days, Ralph's peril aboard the Nelly G. seemed a matter of course in his mind. His sister's inbred terror of the sea (shared by so many longshore women) made little impression on Tobias Bassett.
But the sudden revelation of Lorna's despair shook his calmness. He had loved her ever since she and Ralph had toddled along the beach in rompers, each clinging to one of his hairy, tar-stained fingers. Now that she had grown to beautiful womanhood he was both fond of her and proud of her and had always considered that her growth and advancement was partly due to his watchful care during the long summers she had played along the beach.
Her deep concern now because of the gale and its threat began strongly to affect the lightkeeper. Under the depression of his discovery Tobias forgot to exult that at least half his matchmaking plans had come to fruition. Lorna loved Ralph!
If that was the Nelly G. out yonder—and he believed it was—and if Ralph was aboard her, what could he do to avert a calamity? Aside from his personal feeling for Ralph Endicott, the thought that Lorna was suffering, sobbing and praying in that whitewashed cell downstairs fanned into flame the lightkeeper's desire to help.
What could he do?