even hint at his unwelcome suspicions.

"I will not have you go into this danger, I will not!" stammered Molly
incoherently. The dusk was spreading, and her eyes seemed to grow
larger and larger in the uncertain light.

"Lady Landale, you misunderstand. It is true that to see you safely
restored to your husband's roof is an added reason for my return to
Scarthey--but were you not on board, I should go all the same. I will
tell you why, it is a secret, but you shall know it. I have treasures
on board, vast treasures confided to me, and I must store them in
safety till I can give them back to their rightful owners. This I can
only do at Scarthey--for to cruise about with such a cargo
indefinitely is as impossible as to land it elsewhere. And more than
this, had I not that second reason, I have yet a third that urges me
to Scarthey still."

"For Madeleine?" she whispered, and her teeth gleamed between her
lips.

He remained silent and tried gently to disengage himself from her
slender fingers, but the feeling of their frailness, the knowledge of
her wound, made her feeble grasp as an iron vice to his manliness.

She came closer to him.

"Do you not remember then--what she has said to you? what she wrote to
you in cold blood--the coward--in the very moment when you were
staking your life for love of her? I remember, if you do not--'You
have deceived me,' she wrote, and her hand never trembled, for the
words ran as neatly and primly as ever they did in her convent copy
books. 'You are not what you represented yourself to be--You have
taken advantage of the inexperience of an ignorant girl, I have been
deluded and deceived. I never wish to see you, to hear of you again.'"

"For Heaven's sake, Lady Landale----" cried the man fiercely.

Molly laughed--one of those laughs that have the ring of madness in
them.

"Do I not remember? Ah, that is not all! She knows you now for what
you are, knows what your 'mission' is--but you must not believe she
writes in anger. No, she----"

Captain Jack's patience could bear no further strain.

"Be silent," he commanded fiercely, and wrenched his arm away to face
her with menacing eyes.

"Ah, does it rouse so much anger in you even to hear repeated what she
did not hesitate to write, did not hesitate to allow me to read? And
yet you love her? If you had seen her, if you knew her as I do! I tell
you she means it; when she wrote that she was not angry; it was the
truth--she did it