For a moment there was a blank silence. Robert Lyle stared silently at his niece's husband as though he doubted his sanity, and after a pause Captain Ernscliffe gravely repeated his words:
"Surely I have misunderstood your meaning sir. Queenie certainly went to Europe that year with her mother and sisters."
"If she did I was certainly not aware of the fact," Mr. Lyle answered dryly, for he felt just a little nettled at the other's persistent contradiction.
Captain Ernscliffe looked around at his wife. He started and uttered a cry of alarm as he did so.
She had fallen back against the deck-rail, grasping it with both hands as if unable to stand alone; her cheeks and lips had blanched to an ashen hue, her eyes were wild and frightened.
"Queenie," he said, with an unconscious accent of sternness, "do I speak the truth or not?"
"Lawrence," she gasped, in a frightened voice, "I thought you knew—did not Sydney tell you? you said she had told you all!"
"I meant she had told me all that had transpired between you two in the last six weeks," he answered; "she did not refer to the past only to say that you had been resurrected from the grave by a disappointed suitor who hated you and kept you for weary months a prisoner. What more is there to tell, Queenie?" he inquired, in a voice rendered sharp by suddenly awakened suspicion that as yet took no tangible form.
Through the wild chaos of conflicting feelings that rushed over her she was conscious of a new feeling of tenderness and respect for poor, erring Sydney.