"I had loaded the Pompeia up with all sorts of good things such as are to be procured in the islands and at their stores," he said, trying to be gay and also to brighten her up, "but I might have saved myself the trouble. They are at the bottom of the river, and there they will stay until they are rotten. So, Barbara, I must live on you."
She gave him one swift glance from the sweet hazel eyes under the straight black eyebrows--eyes whose lids were red now from long weeping--and he understood it well enough. He knew that she would give him everything she possessed in the world, including her very life, as well as the fortune that was now to be hers--if old Nicholas had made no mistake, and if no one had ever lighted on the Key and its contents between the time of his departure and the coming of the other Barbara.
"By-the-bye," he said, as they ate their supper side by side, and Barbara tried to put such choice morsels of her poor plain food as there were on his plate, which attention he managed sometimes to avoid--"by-the-bye, we don't know after all what we are really going to discover. Nicholas managed to lose one of the most important parts of his manuscript, the list, as he calls it, of part of what he found. It is a good thing he didn't mislay the description of the Key and the measurements as well. If he had done that we should have been in a fix."
"But," said Barbara, "he has said what is in the long box. We know that, at any rate. Surely that's a fortune in itself?"
"What! six thousand pounds! Why, Barbara, when you go out into the world, the real world, London, the Continent, swagger German and Swiss places in the summer, and Rome and the Riviera in the winter, you'll find what a little bit of money six thousand pounds make. No! Nick's fifty thousand 'guineas' must be found for you before you become anything like a swell heiress with a romantic history, run after by all the men for your beauty and your wealth."
"Don't--don't talk like that!" the girl said. "It pains me to hear you joking like that. I know nothing of the places you mention, and as to men running after me--oh, don't, don't! And besides, you have forgotten--it is not mine."
"Every penny of it!" exclaimed Reginald, "except what Mr. Juby wants for the yacht if uninsured."
"No! no! no!" she said. "Remember, it is not in the island--my island, I suppose, now. The Keys are as much yours, or anyone else's, as mine. And if it had been on the island, and we had dug it up, I would not have taken it. If you would not have shared it with me--I--I--well, I would have thrown it into the sea."
"What a nice ending to poor old Nick's troubles and labours here in finding it, and at home in writing his long account in that queer fist of his! And also to all that your people have gone through, from your namesake downwards. No, no, Barbara! We won't throw it back into the sea, at any rate. And to-morrow we'll dig it up. Shall we?"
This was agreed upon, and then Reginald prepared to leave her. He offered to stay in the house if she felt nervous--as she had once before implored him to do; but now she said, "No, she was not nervous. She feared nothing now. There was no one else who could come to harm him or her; the island was theirs and theirs alone." He noticed that she called it "theirs" and not "hers," but made no remark on the subject, since an idea had arisen in his mind: he knew now what the future of the treasure, of Barbara, and of himself must be!--and he proceeded to arrange for their movements on the morrow.