Nona paused. Though Barbara had listened politely enough she now shrugged her shoulders, saying reproachfully, “Why, Nona, how odd you are! Actually you talk as if you believed Lady Dorian guilty! Always before you have been her staunchest champion. Besides, she seems to have taken a great fancy to you. Now if Mildred had been speaking I should have understood. She has been so influenced by Mrs. Curtis, or by her son; but——”
A peculiar expression crossed her companion’s face which at the instant silenced Barbara.
“Oh, no, I don’t think Lady Dorian guilty; the idea is ridiculous,” Nona whispered. “So far as we have been able to judge, she is one of the gentlest people in the world. The box of papers may prove that she is sacrificing herself for her country in some strange way. She won’t be able to keep them hidden once she lands. Captain Miller says that they will have to be given up to the proper authorities. He did not insist upon her relinquishing them upon his ship, because he had as much as he could do to get us ashore in safety. Besides, Lady Dorian is a woman. Captain Miller says an Irishman had best leave such a situation alone. I am not sure he really suspects her.”
At this moment, hearing footsteps near, Nona Davis turned from looking out toward the sea.
Approaching the place where they stood was the woman about whom they had just been talking. She was dressed in dark-blue cloth with a small hat of the same shade trimmed in a single darker feather. Behind her came her maid carrying a long coat, and on either side of her were two of the ship’s officers. They were entirely respectful, although never getting any distance away. However, they need not have been fearful, because the woman’s hands were locked together with a small steel chain.
She seemed pale and ill and yet, oddly enough, neither frightened nor ashamed.
But the sight of her handcuffs had set Barbara’s cheeks flaming indignantly. Yet they aroused an odd point of view. Could Nona be right in her suggestion that people commit strange crimes in the name of country in times of war, crimes from which their souls would have shrunk in horror during peace? No, guilt of any kind was impossible to imagine in connection with their new friend. In a sense Lady Dorian had become their friend, since she and Nona had been helping to care for her. Lady Dorian had been ill ever since the night of the explosion and the accusation following upon it.
However, while she had been thinking, Nona, who was usually slower in her movements, had crossed over and slipped her arm inside the older woman’s.
They made a queer, effective picture standing together. Barbara was conscious of it before joining them.
They were both women of refinement, who looked as if they should be sheltered from every adversity. Nona was dressed in shabby black, since all the money she had was being devoted to her expenses. Lady Dorian’s costume suggested wealth. Nona was delicately pretty, with promise of beauty to come, while the older woman was at the zenith of her loveliness. Nevertheless, something they had in common. Barbara’s western common sense asserted itself. “Perhaps it is because they both belong to ‘first families,’” she thought wickedly, and wondered if this were a good or evil fortune. Certainly until she reached them, Nona and Lady Dorian were as completely alone as if the ship’s deck had been a desert island.