"Wait."
The boat ground on the pebbly beach, and Dick admonished the lover sotto voce——
"Don't—now don't sentimentalize on the way; every minute is valuable; the admiral is not deaf, and the lady's box is sure to be heavy."
Roscoria was off like a chamois-hunter. Tregurtha sat on the beach and smoked a pipe, stretching his legs in great tranquillity. Not that he was ignorant that Rosetta's window also had a light in it, but he knew it did not shine for him, and, considering all things, he thought it wiser to look in the opposite direction.
It was soon, in reality, that two figures began to descend the cliff-path. Roscoria first, bearing a modest trunk on his shoulder, and looking back each moment to see if Lyndis knew her way in the moonlight.
Lyndis herself was muffled up in a large cloak. She did not seem at all nervous. All that Tregurtha noticed, as she stepped into the boat and bade him "good-evening" with a sort of pathetic courtesy, was that her figure stood straight and firm, and that she trod the rocks in the uncertain light with Devonshire decision.
The lieutenant was secretly a trifle shocked by the coolness of the young couple. Feeling himself the incarnation of duplicity and insubordination, he would have liked a more remorseful attitude in the fugitives themselves.
"How do you do, Miss Villiers?" said Tregurtha, doffing his sou'-wester politely, and at that moment he chanced to look up at the house and saw the little solitary light go out.
Rosetta also had found a fearful joy in the adventure. She would dearly have liked the moon-lit row for herself, or, failing that, would fain have waved her hand to Richard—but here conscience stepped in. She therefore watched the party from behind her curtain until she saw them safely into the boat, and took a last critical glance at her own lover, preferred him to Roscoria, blew out the light, and—probably went to sleep; for indeed she had quite cheered up, and Dick had been right in saying that she would only weep one day for his sorrow. Tregurtha smiled mournfully to himself as he reflected that the fiery southern natures may excel us in warmth of feeling, but we of the colder north can beat them in constancy.
They pulled off from shore, after a few instants of great anxiety, because of the pebbles' traitorous noise; and then they made an energetic start. The thoughts of the trio were concentrated on putting distance between themselves and the possibility of pursuit. Lyndis steered until the men lost their first vigor, when she took the place of one of them and rowed with the enterprise of an ancient Phœnician. At first she felt a delicacy taking thus active a part in the escape, but this finally vanished when she looked at Roscoria spreading out his cramped fists in smiling relief whenever she stood up to take his oar.