"Alone!" said Crawford in a tone of surprise. "It is a kind of thing generally done openly. Did you tell her I wished to give her a reward?"
"Yes, sir. She said you would know before you left her why she preferred no one should be present."
"Well," said Crawford, who felt that this was an attempt to keep the generosity of his gift from the eyes of others, "I am going to give her these five tenners." He held out the notes in his hand and turned them over, and then, still keeping them in his hand lest some one might suspect a trick, stepped into the pier-master's private room or cabin.
It was a very tiny room, with a small table in the middle, a writing-table in one of the two windows, and three chairs. There seemed to be no space for moving about. Even if the chairs were out of the way, two people could not walk abreast round the centre table.
Standing with her back to the second window Crawford found the woman who had saved his life less than half-an-hour ago. Her veil, which had been disarranged in the struggle, was now close drawn.
With the notes in one hand and holding out the other to grasp hers in his gratitude, he was about to advance, when she held up her hand and said in a hoarse dull voice, "No nearer. I have been very ill. It is safer our hands should not meet."
He sprang back as far as the walls would allow. He had the most intense horror of contagious diseases. He was now in the most fervent haste to bring the interview to an end. He would freely have given another fifty to be out of that room.
"I merely wished to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the noble manner in which you snatched my life from death, to offer you this fifty pounds as a small token of the esteem in which I hold the services you have rendered me;" he shook the notes, but did not advance his hand any nearer to the centre of contagion; "and to say that my everlasting gratitude must be yours." He could always make a little speech.
"There was a time," she said in her peculiar hoarse, dull voice, "when I should have been very glad to take those fifty pounds--ay, as many shillings--from you, but I cannot take them now."
"There was a time!" said he, surprised, and interested notwithstanding his fear of disease; "surely I could not have had the privilege of offering them to you longer ago than an hour."