full of resolution, but as if the necessity that she was facing
disturbed her. Mr. Royal suddenly perceived that his daughter had not
finished, that behind that expression there was, not a suggestion,
indeed, but a decision. She had come to him, not for advice, but for
approval; she knew what to do. Her plan would scarcely be one to meet
the approval of people like Mrs. Eveleigh. But he recognized that the
soul that was looking out from Elizabeth's fearless eyes had a high law
of its own. And when his daughter spoke in this mood, Mr. Royal was
reverent enough to listen.

CHAPTER XXV.

DUTY.

"How strange it seems here," said Nancy Foster leaning forward toward
Elizabeth, as they sat in the sunshine on the deck of the schooner; and
as she spoke she glanced along the horizon.

Elizabeth before answering turned her head in the direction in which the
land, had it been in sight, would have appeared; but no vision of shore
broke the wide circuit of ocean and sky. Then her eyes came back to the
little vessel as if to assure herself that she was not alone in this
waste of water. Her father sat on the opposite side reading. With a word
of reply to Nancy, she fell into silence again. Only, instead of the
vague wonder how she should meet the future, her thoughts now turned to
the past. It was nine mornings since that consultation with her father
in the library, and they had been only one night at sea. It had taken a
week to get off. From the first she had counted upon Mrs. Eveleigh's
remonstrances and vehement reproaches of Mr. Royal's wrong-doing in
taking his daughter into such danger. They were only a little more
vehement than she had expected. But Mrs. Eveleigh did not know the
errand; if she had, that would have made a difference, or, as Elizabeth
reflected, she thought that this would have been treated as the
strangest part of the affair. But she had kept her own counsel, saying
only that her father and she thought it right. Mrs. Eveleigh had been so
exasperated by being kept in the dark that she had retained her anger to
the very last day. Then she had drowned her resentment in a flood of
tears, and declared between her sobs that, frightful as it all was, for
she dreaded the very sight of a gun, she would rather go with Elizabeth
than have the dear girl set off without any companion. Elizabeth's
reminder that her father and Nancy were to accompany her only called
forth the assertion that a maid was no companion, an