“You have met before?” she said quickly. “That is very nice. You know each other, and can talk over yesterday’s adventure without my help. Will you excuse me if I leave you for a few moments, while I give some orders to the maids?”
No one answered, but she lost no time in hurrying from the room, and as the door closed behind her, the Captain came slowly across the room, staring at Bridgie’s white face.
“Miss O’Shaughnessy! She called you ‘Miss O’Shaughnessy’!”
She shrank before him, scared by his strange, excited manner.
“Yes, it is my name. I am Bridgie O’Shaughnessy. Don’t you remember me?”
“Remember you!” he repeated with an emphasis which was more eloquent than a hundred protestations. He seized her hands in a painful pressure. “You are not married, then? It was not true! You did not marry him as they told me?”
“I? You thought I was married! Oh, what put such an idea into your head?”
“I heard it eighteen months ago—shortly after your last letter arrived, telling me about your father, and hinting at other changes which might follow. My friend wrote that Miss O’Shaughnessy was engaged to a fellow with a lot of money—Hilliard—that they were going to be married almost at once. Was it all an invention? Was there no truth in it at all?”
“It was quite true—quite, but it was Esmeralda, not me! She married him over a year ago.”
“Esmeralda! your sister—but he said the eldest daughter, and you are the eldest. I knew I was not mistaken about that, for I remember every word you had told me.”