"Yes, what's the odds?" echoed Van Hise cheerfully, and led her to Dorian.
She wondered in a dazed way if she ought to tell her lover the truth—tell him she had been married to the repulsive old miser, but her whole soul rose in rebellion against the humiliating confession.
She remembered how he had scorned Azalea because she would have married him for his money. No—no, he would despise her if he knew—he who had never known poverty and hunger and bitter need—that she had sold herself to the horrible old miser for a chest of gold.
When she saw Dorian lying in the berth so wan and pale, wounded in a chivalrous defense of her, she forgot everything else but that she loved him wildly—madly! Loved him with a love that was her doom.
Quite overcome, she sank upon her knees by Dorian's berth.
"Oh, my love, my love," she whispered, with her lips against his brow.
And then Dorian knew that the victory was won. If she had wavered for one moment his pale, handsome, suffering face had turned the scale in his favor.
And her dark eyes answered without words.
"You are an angel," he murmured. "Oh, Nita, I will pay you for this with a life's devotion. But I should have died of my wound, I think, very soon if you had said you would not marry me!"
"My dear Miss Farnham, permit me," said Captain Van Hise at this juncture.