She touched with her lips the back of the toil-stained hand.
And she, having sealed her abdication in such wise, looked up into his flushed face with a swift, shy smile, the flutter of the fledgling hope in her heart stirring softly the priceless lace that outlined her bosom, and the little golden locket that lay therein.
"You're my brother—my step-brother, now, aren't you, Mr. Brasse?" she asked, almost in a whisper.
"It seems so, Sallie," he answered mechanically, his wandering wits almost beyond his control. Her unconscious use of the name by which she had always known him had brought to his mental vision a blurred picture of her on the bridge of the Olive Branch in a stiff breeze, himself at the fiddley-hatch.
"And everything that might have been mine is yours now?"
"Ours," he corrected, without any interest, as if that was of no consequence. "There should be enough for us both; and, in any case, I need very little—now."
"But it's all yours by law, isn't it?" she urged. "I must make sure, because—" She looked back, over her shoulder. Mr. Jobling had joined Slyne and Captain Dove; the three of them were engaged, with bated breaths, in a sibilant argument, their heads very close together. Lord Ingoldsby had just risen and was slouching over to the other ingle-nook, where the duchess had made Herries sit down. Only Justin Carthew remained motionless, half turned in his high-backed chair, leaning heavily on one of its arms while he still stared, almost unseeingly, at Sallie and her companion.
"How does that fellow come to be here?" asked the ex-engineer, indicating Carthew with a puzzled nod, and, as Sallie told him what had occurred since she herself had arrived at Loquhariot, his expression grew always more blank again. But when she went on to explain how Slyne had tried to entrap her for his own profit, his dull eyes brightened and began to burn.
"And now," she said at last, "perhaps he won't want to marry me—when there's nothing to be gained by it. I can't tell you how thankful I am that you've come home in time."