CHAPTER XII.
BY FRANK DANBY.
“Row faster, man, row faster. Move—no, sit where you are, but give me the other oars. Pull, pull,” he said, “as if you were getting away from hell.” And feverishly, with white set lips, with gleaming eyes, Lord Francis accentuated his words by his actions, and propelled the boat with all the strength of which he was capable, across the blue waters that kept him from Fenella. His feet pressed against the wood, the muscles of his arms standing out like iron, the youth in him dying under the strain, his very brain ceasing to act, and his heart almost standing still; he tried by physical exertion to deaden that burning mental pain that seized him as he felt, saw, heard, and writhed under the sense that he had wronged her, wronged Fenella, wronged the woman who always was and always would be the one woman on earth for him; wronged the girl love that had lain on his breast, believed and loved him; the child who had grown to womanhood in his arms—Fenella, his wife.
And at last the keel of the boat grated on the shore.
He had sat still while Lord Castleton had spoken of the trial. Once the stunning news had overwhelmed him, he had become an automaton and not a man. Sea and sky melted mistily into each other, and mechanically from his mouth issued the empty sentences. But then the hours passed on, Castleton slept, the yacht lay at its moorings, and then—then a glimmer of reason and sense penetrated the dull concussion of that first shock.
“Fenella,” he said, “Fenella;” it was a moan, a cry; not a human being asking for his wife, but a soul in anguish crying to its God.
“Did you call, sir?” asked the mate, coming forward, touching his gold-braided cap; “did you call?” With bloodshot eyes Frank looked at him, saw beyond him: “Fenella.”
“Any part of Guernsey, sir?”
“I must get back, I must get back.”
All that he was capable of was a wish to get back, to see her face again, to fling himself down on his knees before her, see that fair sweet face, that child’s face. Murderess they had called her, unfaithful he had called her, O Heaven! and she was his wife, and he——
And then he was in Guernsey again.