"The girl must be clean crazy," she ejaculated, "to venture on the stormy sea such a night! I do wonder, though, what brought Miss Sibyl here to-night?"
"Dunno," said Carl, speaking with his mouth full of griddle-cake. "She was talking sort o' crazy in the boat. 'Spect' she thought that Mr. Drummond was here."
Christie, whose white fingers were, as usual, flying busily, as she plied her needle, suddenly flushed to the temples, and then grew paler than before. She knew what had brought Sibyl to the island, though she had hardly fancied she would have ventured out in such a storm.
"Oh, I wish it had been clear to-night!" she thought, lifting her head, and listening anxiously to the howling tempest.
Lem, true to his promise, had faithfully delivered Drummond's note to Christie unobserved. But would he come in all this storm?
Some vague rumor had reached her ear that Miss Campbell, the beauty and heiress, was soon to be the bride of Willard Drummond. She did not believe it; it was too monstrous, too dreadful; the bare possibility of such a thing was maddening. But Sibyl loved him, and might cherish hopes that could never be realized; and Christie felt it her duty, despite her promise, to put an end to all these hopes, once and forever, by proclaiming their marriage. Therefore, she had seized the first opportunity, and sent the note before mentioned by Captain Campbell.
By this time Carl Henley had dispatched his supper; and laboring under a vague impression that some one would be in presently to carry him off by force, as Mr. Drummond had done on a previous occasion, he made a hasty exit up the ladder to bed, firmly resolving not to go out again, though Aunt Tom should pull every hair out of his head.
And when he was gone, Mrs. Tom, having secured the windows and doors, drew up her wheel, and sat down to spin. And Christie, with cheeks flushed, and eyes bright with anxiety and impatience, sewed on in silence, replying vaguely and at random to the stream of smalltalk kept up by Mrs. Tom.
There were many anxious thoughts passing through the mind of the young girl. Why had Willard been absent for so long a time?—why had he appointed this strange midnight meeting?—would he venture on the sea in night and storm; and, if he came, what could his visit and note portend? His manner had changed so of late, that, in spite of herself, the conviction that he already repented of his hasty marriage forced itself upon her with a pang like the bitterness of death.
"Oh, I might have known," was her inward cry, "that he, so rich, so handsome, possessing the love of one so beautiful as Sibyl Campbell, could never be content with poor little me! Oh, I might have known he would tire of me; but I was crazed, and believed all he told me. Something warned me it would, sooner or later, come to this; but now that it has come, it does not make it any easier to bear."