“Ronny, Ronny darling—my child, my son—oh! how good is God. Let us thank God together.”
Quietly the two friends opened the cabin door and saw father and son on their knees in an attitude of prayer. The child was looking up into his father’s eyes, and the wasted man with streaming eyes was kissing his wife’s portrait, and murmuring, “I have kept my oath. Beloved one, I’m bringing Ronny home to his mother’s arms.”
The stars went out and darkness fell upon the sea. There was silence in the cabin now, for father and boy were wrapped in a profound sleep. Castleton and Jacynth had finished their cigars and turned in.
Close upon midnight two figures came upon deck from the steerage part of the steamer, and walked backward and forward without exchanging a single word. But they never separated.
It was a detective from Scotland Yard, and Mme. de Vigny was in his custody, cursing her fate.
As the huge ship plunged through the green Atlantic waves, bearing homeward the fatal lives of so many interested in this eventful history, poor Fenella, worn almost to a shadow, sat dreaming in her garden in “the island of carnations.”
She knew, at any rate, that Frank was faithful, and that her boy was safe.
CHAPTER XIX.
BY CLO. GRAVES.
The great liner swiftly pushed her homeward way through the rolling surges of the Atlantic. Other yearning, tender hearts there doubtless were whose sole freight of hope the steamer carried; but the heart that beat so anxiously in the little Guernsey cottage had the most at stake. The ordeal of the past months had not lessened Fenella’s beauty. The outlines of her features were sharper, their tints less vivid than of old. The tawny eyes looked wistfully out upon the world from orbits that were hollowed with grief and watching, the chestnut hair showed a thread of silver here and there. Would Ronny know his mother again? Fenella often asked herself that question. Meanwhile, for the child’s sake, she husbanded her newly-recovered strength with jealous care. She ate and drank, rose and slept, walked and rested, for Ronny. He must not find a peevish invalid in place of the old playfellow. None but her own hands should henceforth minister to the needs of this small idol of her heart. With these and other fond foolish fancies, she wore away the tedious hours of waiting.
One of her usual walks led in the direction of the village of St. Sampson’s. The brown-faced quarrymen and fisher-folk grew accustomed to the sight of the pale, plainly-dressed lady with the wistful eyes, who so often paused to rest, or to smile at and speak kindly to the sturdy, sun-burnt urchins that rolled in the dust by cottage thresholds, and pulled off their blue knitted caps as they passed her, in rude homage of her beauty, and respect for her loneliness.