But quickly she regained her composure and looked up at him with a calm unwavering gaze that told him how much she had undergone and the strength of character she had gained during the fearful weeks that she had been marooned on this savage and desolate coast.
"How foolish of me to give way!" she reproached herself. "It is what you might have expected of me before—before I had been through all this, with his example to uplift me out of my helplessness and inefficiency. Believe me, Lord Avondale, I am a very different young woman from the shallow, frivolous girl you knew during those days on the Mediterranean."
"Shallow! frivolous!" he protested. "Anything but that, Miss Genevieve!
You must have known how vastly different were my—er—impressions. If
Lady Bayrose hadn't so suddenly shunted you off at Aden to the Cape
boat—Took me quite by surprise, I assure you. Had you kept on to
India, I had hoped to—er—"
She gave him a glance that checked his fast-mounting ardor.
"I—I beg pardon!" he apologized. "This of course is hardly the time—About the others, if I may ask—that is, if it's not too painful for you. I infer that Lady Bayrose—that she did not—reach the shore."
The girl's thorn-scarred, sun-blistered hands clasped together almost convulsively. But she met his look of concern with unflinching braveness.
"Poor dear Lady Bayrose!" she murmured. "They had put her and the maids into one of the boats—there at the first, when the ship crashed on the reef. They ran back to fetch me, but before they could rush me across, a wave more terrible than all the others swept the ship. It tore loose the boat and whirled them away, over and over!"
"Gad!" he exclaimed.
"It also carried away the captain and most of the crew. Between the breakers, Winthrope and Tom and I were flung into the one remaining boat. Winthrope cut the rope before the sailors could follow, and then—then the steamer slipped back off the reef and went down."
"I say! Only the three of you left! The boat brought you safe ashore?"