“DO YOU ACCEPT THAT BLOW?”
In the meantime Fabian picked up the card which Harry Drake had thrown on the table. He held it between the tips of his fingers as if loath to touch it. Corsican was pale, and my heart beat wildly. At last Fabian looked at the card, and read the name on it, then with a voice stifled by passion he cried,—
“Harry Drake! you! you! you!”
“The same, Captain Mac Elwin,” quietly replied Fabian’s rival.
We were not deceived, if Fabian was ignorant until now of Drake’s name, the latter was only too well aware of Fabian’s presence on the “Great Eastern.”
CHAPTER XXVII.
The next day, at break of dawn, I went in search of Captain Corsican, whom I found in the grand saloon. He had passed the night with Fabian, who was still suffering from the shock which the name of Ellen’s husband had given him. Did a secret intuition tell him that Drake was not alone on board? Had Ellen’s presence been revealed to him by the appearance of this man? Lastly, could he guess that the poor crazed woman was the young girl whom he so fondly loved? Corsican could not say, for Fabian had not uttered one word all night.
Corsican resented Fabian’s wrongs with a kind of brotherly feeling. The intrepid nature of the latter had from childhood irresistibly attracted him, and he was now in the greatest despair.
“I came in too late,” said he to me. “Before Fabian could have raised his hand, I ought to have struck that wretch.”
“Useless violence,” replied I. “Harry Drake would not have risked a quarrel with you; he has a grudge against Fabian, and a meeting between the two had become inevitable.”