"Your daughter! Then she left a child?"
"One. It is on her account I have come. The climate killed her mother. I had mercy on her daughter, and have brought her home."
"I am sorry for your wife. Why did she remain in India?"
"Because she preferred death to leaving me. She loved me, Lady Thetford."
His powerful eyes were on her face—that pale, beautiful face, into which the blood came for an instant at his words. She looked at him, then away over the darkening sea.
"And you, my lady—you gained the desire of your heart, wealth, and a title? Let me hope they have made you a happy woman."
"I am not happy."
"No? But you have been—you were while Sir Noel lived?"
"My husband was very good to me, Captain Everard. His death was the greatest misfortune that could have befallen me."
"But you are young, you are free, you are rich, you are beautiful. You may wear a coronet next time."