And Nita made a movement as if to rise, but fell back upon the pillow exhausted.
"Oh, my dear young lady, please calm yourself, please try to bear what I have to tell you. Mr. Mountcastle is all right—yes, indeed, I hope and believe he is all right, but it is impossible for him to come to you just now because——"
She paused timorously.
"Because——" the young bride echoed with piercing anxiety, and then the maid blurted out with a bitter, stifled sob:
"Because it wasn't your husband's yacht that rescued us, but another man's. Oh, my dear, don't take it so to heart, please don't. Let us be thankful we are alive, and that some day you will be reunited to your dear husband again."
There was a blank silence of such terrible despair that it could find no outlet. Then Nita asked in a low, sad voice:
"Then, Lizette, where are we now?"
"Oh, Miss Nita, can you bear it? The yacht that saved us brought us to a lonely island way up here in Fortune's Bay, hundreds of miles from New York."
Again there was a blank silence of sorrow and disappointment. Nita's heart ached with the pain of this strange separation from her husband.
They looked at each other, she and the faithful maid, and Lizette tried to smile, but it was a wretched failure. Her poor lips trembled with the effort to restrain a bursting sob, and Nita felt instinctively that she was keeping something back.