Her hitherto fixed and staring eyes shoot with a gleam of returning intelligence. She closes them, and her head falls forward.
“She will sleep now,” observes the doctor, as he lays her down and turns her on her side, “and when she awakes she will be all right. A marvellous recovery. She must have wonderful vitality in her. We will leave her now quiet, Lady Flora. The yacht is in motion again. Do we continue the search?”
“Yes, but along the coast. I must go now, doctor. You will let me know later how the patient is, won’t you?”
“Certainly,” he answers cheerfully.
Flora returns on deck. Léonie’s words have puzzled her. They were clearly addressed to Gloria, and yet these disjointed utterances can convey but one interpretation of her fate. Gladly would Flora swallow a grain of hope, but she knows that it would only make the reality harder to bear, a reality which she has faced and accepted already.
“Gloria,” she whispers, “if you can hear me now, you will know how true was Flora’s friendship. God help me, and I will clear your name of that foul charge laid to your door. Léonie may know something of it, and she will tell me, for on the threshold of death has she not said that she loves you?”
Brave, noble Flora! Self is buried in those generous words. She never pauses to think of the danger in which she stands, or the trouble which she must suffer. But Flora is heroic.
The yacht is gliding into Moidart’s Loch, and again the lifeboat cutter is manned and lowered. Flora has determined to search the whole shore within the radius of the drifting inland current, which long experience of these coasts has taught her, draws wrecks thereto.
She will conduct the search in this direction herself, while, as is now arranged, Estcourt and Archie Douglasdale will prosecute it along Shona’s rocky coast in the large gig. Archie had returned to Glenuig Bay, on the evening before, only to find the fishing box deserted, his sister, Ravensdale, and Estcourt gone. One of his trusty Ruglen retainers awaited him, however, with the information that they had crossed the hills by Kinlockmoidart for Eilean Shona, where the duke’s yacht lay anchored. The message which Léonie had been entrusted to convey was to this very effect, the duke having further commissioned her to apprise Gloria of his intended arrival alone, from the Loch Eilort side.
“Evie,” says Flora gently, “you will come with me, will you not? I am going to search the sand beaches in the cutter up to Ru Druimnich. Come, Evie.”