The girl started.
"What?" she said, wonderingly.
"Cape Henry to port, Virginia. We'll have a tug in an hour. The dawn is coming now. The sun will see us in Newport News."
Virginia regarded him dreamily, and tightened her clasp about his neck.
"Newport News," she said; "and what do I care! You have not kissed me in an age."
CHAPTER XV
CONCLUSION
The next afternoon Horace Howland sat in his office at No. 11 Broadway, staring moodily at his desk with its accumulation of papers. For long, it seemed, he had lived in an agony of suspense. Friends had come and gone and said their words, and passed on unrecognized and unheeded.
How many times had he wished that the Ward liner which had crossed the path of the boats and picked them up the morning after the fire had left him at least to perish. A full half-dozen tugs and steamships had been sent to the scene of the conflagration there to cruise about until some trace of the missing should be found. A Clyde vessel had sighted the burned steamship, a mere mass of charred and twisted frames and plates, sinking low in the sea. A Government cruiser and a revenue cutter had joined in the search.