He paused a moment, and looked at the pale, statue-like woman before him.
"Where is the child?" he asked, almost plaintively.
Her eyes fell before his earnest gaze, her cheeks blanched to the pallor of marble.
"She must have been mistaken," she faltered. "There was no child."
The young sailor regarded her keenly.
"Madam, I do not believe you," he answered, bluntly. "You are trying to deceive me. I ask you again, where is my child? Is it dead? Was it drowned with its hapless young mother?"'
"I tell you there was no child," she answered, defiantly, stung to bitterest anger by his words.
"But there was a child," persisted Captain Mainwaring. "Lora would not have deceived me."
"Not willfully, I know, but she was mistaken, I tell you," was the passionate response.
"I do not believe you, Mrs. St. John. You are trying to deceive me for some purpose of your own. You kept my wife from me, and you would fain keep my child, also. You have hidden it away from me! Nay, I believe on my soul that it is my child you hold in your arms and claim as your own. Give it to me," he cried, advancing upon her.