by the genial surroundings, her tender blue eyes, the color of the turquoise in her magnificent white corsage, smiled musingly. She forgot the dangerous character of her brother, and the future infidelity of her _fiancé_, to think of nothing but the caressing eyes, the voluptuous lips, and the alluring grace of the young man whose wife she would be in a few hours. Nor could the Baroness Ely resist the contagion that floated in this atmosphere. Once more the loved one was near her and all her own. In his youthful eyes she could see such respect and love, timidity and desire. He spoke to her in words that all could hear, but with a trembling in his voice which she alone could understand. She began by replying to him, then she also grew silent. A great wave of passion rose within her, drowning all other thoughts. Her fears of the future, her remorse for the past--all was forgotten in the presence of Pierre, whom she could see with his heart beating, his breast agitated, alive and quivering beside her. How often he was thus to see her in memory, and pardon the fearful suffering she had caused him for the sake of her beauty at that moment! Ah! divine, divine beauty! Her eyes were drowned in languorous ecstasy. Her open lips breathed in the air as though half dying. The admirable curve of her neck rose with such grace above her low-cut dress of black,--a black that gave a richer gleam to the whiteness of her flower-soft skin; and in the simple folds of her hair, crowning her noble head, burned a single stone, a ruby, red and warm as a drop of blood. How often he was to remember her thus, and as she appeared to him when later she leaned on the railing of the deck and watched the water that murmured, dashed, and sighed in the darkness, and the sky and the silent innumerable stars; and then looked at him and said: "I love you. Ah! how I love you." They had exchanged no promises. And yet, as surely as the sea and sky were there around them he knew that the hour had come, and that this night, this sky and sea, were the mystic and solemn witnesses of their secret betrothal! Nothing was audible in the calm night but the peaceful and monotonous respiration of the moving boat and the rhythmic splash of the sea--the caressing sea, their accomplice, who enchanted and rocked them in its gentle waves--while the tempest waited. CHAPTER VI IL MATRIMONIO SEGRETO When the first pale rays of dawn broke upon the glass of the porthole, Pierre rose and went on deck. Dickie Marsh was there already, regarding the sky and the sea with the attentive scrutiny of an old sailor.