"Delays are dangerous," he answers, "and the mails are not sure. Suppose your letter should not reach them. Letters have been lost before now," he says, artfully.
The girlish face grows white and troubled.
"If I thought that mine would be lost——" she begins.
"You would go," he finishes for her. "Very well, Reine, take my advice and go. I will remain here until you return. Go down now to your husband and tell him you will be ready to accompany him to-morrow."
"If anything should happen to you, I should never forgive myself," she says, with lingering hesitation.
"Nothing will happen," he answered. "You will find me here, when you come back, safe and well. Go, now, to Vane, and tell him you will go."
She lingers a moment, warned by some strange presentiment of evil; then, conquered by his renewed persuasions, and her own anxiety over Maud's fate, she goes from the room with a strangely beating heart to seek her husband.
He throws away his segar with a smile at sight of her, and comes out from a little knot of men who have clustered around him.
"You are ready?" he says, with a new tone of tenderness in his voice that makes the girlish heart beat all the faster, and drawing her hand through his arm they bend their steps to the shore.