A long silence followed. Hilda looked steadily out on the water, and Gualtier watched her with hungry eyes. At last, as though she felt his eyes upon her, she turned and looked at him. A great change had come over her face. It was fixed and rigid and haggard--her eyes had something in them that was awful. Her lips were white--her face was ashen. She tried to speak, but at first no sound escaped. At last she spoke in a hoarse voice utterly unlike her own.
"_She_ is gone, then."
"_For evermore_!" said Gualtier.
Hilda turned her stony face once more toward the sea, while Gualtier looked all around, and then turned his gaze back to this woman for whom he had done so much.
"After a while"--he began once more, in a slow, dull voice--"the wind came up, and we hoisted sail. We went on our way rapidly, and by the middle of the following day we arrived at Leghorn. I paid the men off and dismissed them. I myself came back to London immediately, over the Alps, through Germany. I thought it best to avoid Marseilles. I do not know what the men did with themselves; but I think that they would have made some trouble for me if I had not hurried away. Black Bill said as much when I was paying them. He said that when he made the bargain he thought it was only some 'bloody insurance business,' and, if he had known what it was to have been, he would have made a different bargain. As it was, he swore I ought to double the amount I had promised. I refused, and we parted with some high words--he vowing vengeance, and I saying nothing."
[Illustration: "Black Bill Has Kept On My Track.">[
"Ah!" said Hilda, who had succeeded in recovering something of her ordinary calm, "that was foolish in you--you ought to have satisfied their demands."
"I have thought so since."
"They may create trouble. You should have stopped their mouths."