"Manitowoc?" he said. "I want to know what you've heard from the Solwerk.... You hear me? ... The men the Solwerk picked up. You have the names yet?"
"..."
"The Benton?"
"..."
"Oh, I understand! All from the Benton. I see! ... No; never mind their names. How about Number 25? Nothing more heard from them?"
Constance had caught his shoulder while he was speaking and now clung to it. Release—release of strain was going through him; she could feel it, and she heard it in his tones and saw it in his eyes.
"The steamer Number 25 rammed proves to have been the Benton," he told her. "The men are all from her. They had abandoned her in the small boats, and the Solwerk picked them up before the ferry found her."
He was not asking her to congratulate him upon the relief he felt; he had not so far forgotten himself as that. But it was plain to her that he was congratulating himself; it had been fear that he was feeling before—fear, she was beginning to understand, that those on the ferry had been saved. She shrank a little away from him. Benjamin Corvet had not been a friend of Henry's—they had quarreled; Uncle Benny had caused trouble; but nothing which she had understood could explain fear on Henry's part lest Uncle Benny should be found safe. Henry had not welcomed Alan; but now Henry was hoping that Alan was dead. Henry's words to her in the north, after Alan had seen her there, iterated themselves to her: "I told that fellow Conrad not to keep stirring up these matters about Ben Corvet.... Conrad doesn't know what he'll turn up; I don't know either. But it's not going to be anything pleasant...." Only a few minutes ago she had still thought of these words as spoken only for Alan's sake and for Uncle Benny's; now she could not think of them so. This fear of news from the north could not be for their sake; it was for Henry's own. Had all the warnings been for Henry's sake too?
Horror and amazement flowed in upon her with her realization of this in the man she had promised to marry; and he seemed now to appreciate the effect he was producing upon her. He tried obviously to pull himself together; he could not do that fully; yet he managed a manner assertive of his right over her.
"Connie," he cried to her, "Connie!"