Cammock was a long time gone; but not such a long time as it seemed. Margaret, deserted by Perrin, who was called away by Cottrill, paced the poop moodily, losing, in dejection, the clumsy trick of carriage which marred his gait. His ordinary walk had a kind of jaunty spring, which seemed unnatural to the man, improper to his essential character. There was no jauntiness in him at this moment; for his trouble was heavy. For possible arrest he cared nothing; for possible hanging he cared nothing. “I shall still be myself,” he said, repeating what Perrin had repeated from another. “What does it matter if I am hanged?” Bells seemed to be ringing in his brain, heavy bells and dull, with merry impish bells. “Olivia’s going to have a child,” they said. “Olivia’s going to have a child. Going to have a child. A child. A child.” Like many lonely men, he desired children. They had played about him in his dreams of her. Girls mostly, with Olivia’s eyes, her throat, her voice. Now was come the end of everything. Her child would be a monster, a goat-footed boy, a Stukeley. He shuddered to think of the child’s hair, curling and black like the father’s hair, negro hair; his nerves were shaken. As for his love for Olivia, that would never be the same; it was changed now, wholly changed. No man’s love could bear that, could forgive that; though it glorified her, in a way, and made her very sacred. He leaned over the taffrail, to watch for Cammock, who had vanished among the strangers, like a stone cast into water. Something stirred beside him, and there was Olivia, dressed in clothes which she had worn long ago at home, looking as she had looked then; but that her face was paler. He started to see her, thinking for a moment that she had come to tell him, hoping it with all his heart. It would make their friendship perfect, he thought, if this might be done together. She smiled to see him start; but her face instantly grew grave again. “Charles,” she said, “is anything the matter with Tom?” “Matter with him?” he repeated. “Is he ill? Has he hurt himself?” For just one wild second, he wondered, in an agony that was half hope, if the man had taken poison. “I can’t get him to speak to me. And he’s so white, Charles, I can’t help thinking that he is sunstruck.” “Shall I go down?” “He won’t see anybody. He won’t---- Oh, Charles, I wish I’d been on deck with him. Was he in the sun? Are you sure he wasn’t?” “He wasn’t in the sun, Olivia. He wasn’t on deck for more than a few minutes.” “But where was he, then? He must have been forward, where you couldn’t see him.” “I do hope he wasn’t,” said Margaret, hating himself for his deception. The words “Mrs. Inigo” rose to his lips; but he kept from uttering them. “I ought to have prevented all this. I might have. I ought to have kept them apart till---- She ought not to be fretting.” He bit his lips at the thought of his negligence.