“I don’t know,” said Maurice again slowly. “We should have had Teffany-Wise’s legacy just the same, I imagine, and Eirene would have been the same. She would not have waited for Wylie, you know. No, I don’t think you need reproach yourself with that, Zoe,—as if you hadn’t enough to bear.”
“Don’t!” said Zoe quickly, dashing away an intrusive tear. “And the worst of it is that what I said to him when I refused him was perfectly justified—absolutely true. Any reasonable man would have seen it, only—you know——”
“This particular man is not reasonable?” suggested Maurice. “Of course he isn’t—on this subject. If he was, he wouldn’t be Wylie. But if he was, how glad I should have been if he had married you and taken you out of this!”
“He wouldn’t have gone, and I wouldn’t have been taken,” said Zoe with conviction. “We should stand by you and Eirene to the end, Maurice—as we shall now. But surely things are no worse now than they were, if the warships are going to let us alone? You and—he—always said that it was only a source of weakness to hold Ahmed Pasha.”
“If the warships let us alone to starve?” said Maurice. “We can hold out for a week on the present restricted allowance, no longer. And how are we to get supplies?”
“Lord Armitage may come any day,” Zoe reminded him.
“No; I forgot to tell you. Demetri the fisherman came in to Skandalo when I was there this morning, and said he had actually sighted the yacht outside the blockading warships. He tried to signal to her how bad our plight was, but unfortunately his boat attracted the notice of a Hercynian destroyer,—she was beyond our own waters, of course. They came to order her back, sighted the yacht, and went off in chase. He heard the sound of firing, but can’t say whether she was captured. It’s just possible that she gave them the slip in the night, of course.”
“I should have thought Lord Armitage would have taken the risk and run for Skandalo,” said Zoe.
“Then he would have been sunk, to a certainty, and what good would his stores be to us at the bottom of the sea? No, he will try to keep out of sight till he finds a chance of getting in, but the worst of it is they will all be looking for him now.”
“I should send the refugees back to the mainland,” said Zoe suddenly. “The food would last much longer if we had only the insurgents and the regular inhabitants.”