“We shall have a long voyage tacking up to South Boston at this rate,” murmured Wentworth.
The Captain grunted assent, and for a few minutes they all were silent.
“How white you look, Harrington,” said Wentworth again, looking at the noble, straight-featured face of his friend, as he sat, bare-headed, leaning against the stern grasping the tiller, with the moonlight resting on his pallid countenance.
Harrington did not answer for a minute, but sat looking at them with still eyes.
“Friends,” said he at length, in a sweet and hollow voice, “come here to me. I want to tell you something.”
A little startled at his tone and manner, they rose and sat near him.
“Promise me that you will not let Antony know what I am going to tell you,” he said. “I don’t want to grieve the poor creature, and besides, it is necessary to the preservation of our secret. I do not know whether the secret can be preserved now, but it is possible, and we must try. But promise me that you will not tell Antony.”
“Why, certainly, we will not,” returned Wentworth, vacantly. “What is it?”
“When we get back, Richard,” pursued his friend, “you must take Antony up at once to Charles’s room; then, in the morning, take him in to his brother, and tell Roux what has happened to him, and why you concealed it from him, charging him, at the same time, to say nothing to anybody of this matter. Then you must take both of them to Worcester in the first train. But you must tell neither of them of what I am now going to tell you. Promise me all this.”
“I do,” responded Wentworth, tranced with wonder. “But what is it?”