"I'll take your word for it, sir," Captain Dove declared, and, bowing very graciously, all but over-balanced himself. "And now let me ask you whether you have been listening to any more lies from Farish M'Kissock; because, if you have, we must part brass-rags right away."
Carthew was most sorely tempted to spare the truth, and made haste to answer honestly while he might. "I've heard all he had to tell," said he, "and—"
"And you believe it all!" Captain Dove interposed, with maudlin pathos, his evident intention to see whether he could not even yet make terms of some sort for himself with the young American knocked on the head. "Well, well! We must be jogging now, Sallie."
The girl stepped forward beside him at that, and Carthew was thankful to see Ambrizette clinging to her skirts, for she had told him more than once how often the dumb, black dwarf had stood betwixt her and imminent harm.
Her sweet, sensitive features were very pale, but placid, as if, after the sore stress she had suffered, she had found some sort of peace. And all the pride seemed to have died out of her downcast eyes as she faced him across the dark, impassable gulf that stretched between them.
"I don't want you to think that I have gone away unwillingly, Mr. Carthew," she said, and his heart almost failed him as he heard that. It had never occurred to him that she might have taken such a sheerly suicidal step of her own free will.
"But why—" he cried, and the hurt in his voice perhaps helped to salve a little the sore wounds in her own heart.
"I couldn't possibly have stayed here, you see—after what has happened. And,—I'm not afraid of the future now. You don't understand, perhaps, but—you will remember—I wasn't afraid."
"Come away now, Sallie," said Captain Dove. An irascible voice in the distance was calling upon him insistently.
"Good-bye," she said, submissively, to Carthew, and, looking up, her eyes met his for an instant.