"I do not understand you, Vane. Surely you know not what you say," Miss Langton utters in perplexity.
"Listen, and you shall be the judge," he answers, with a heavy sigh. "I sailed with my wife on the Hesperus——"
"And Uncle Langton?" she interrupts him to ask.
"We left Mr. Langton resting at a quiet summer resort. He was too much indisposed to return with us so soon. We were to have gone back for him as soon as your freedom had been secured," he explains.
She bows, silently, and he goes on, the pale, beautiful girl listening attentively.
"Reine came to me the day that we had been five days out, with that little metallic case in her hand. She had been very bright and happy since we started, but just then she was pale and grave. 'Vane,' she said to me, 'I have put Maud's precious paper in this little case for greater safety. But I have a strange dread of losing it. Put it in your breast pocket and keep it for me!' I—oh, Heaven! I obeyed her," he exclaims, struggling with a bitter remorse.
The beautiful prisoner regards him with silent sympathy.
"I obeyed her," he repeats, with a passionate remorse, "and that night when we sprang into the water together, fleeing from the devouring flames, it was still on my person. All hope seemed gone, and we clung to each other in the desperation of despair, determined at least to die together. Suddenly a crowded life-boat came in sight. A man shouted there was room for one more and that they would take the woman in. At these words she cried out frantically that I had Maud's precious paper, and that I was the one to be saved, and with that she loosed her hold, and with an awful suddenness pushed me from her, and sank down, down in the terrible water. With the awful shock of her loss I became unconscious. They drew me into the boat in the place of my poor girl, and the boat swept on over her awful burial-place. It was for you, Maud. She gave her beautiful, innocent life freely for you rather than risk the loss of the legacy I have brought you!"